Story When All Doors Close

[Kathy in FL]

When All The Doors Close
From the journal of Aria Josefina Corces Lowery

1) Dear Diary,

If I don’t write these feelings out of me I’m gonna wind up saying something that I regret and only make things worse. How do you tell someone – especially the man you are married to – that better than 80% of his problems are self-made? How did things get this messed up? It was never supposed to be this way.

The things he says and does hurt. The things he doesn’t say and do hurt worse.

Where did this meanness come from? How can he be that way with me and so different with almost everyone else?

And again he’s gone slamming out of the door threatening not to ever come home. I know it’s awful, and when I calm down I know I’ll feel ashamed, but sometimes I’d just about burst to be able to tell him, “Then stop talking about it and get it over with already.”

I don’t really feel that way. At least I pray I don’t. I’m just tired of being his target. Tired of being the only one that sees him this way. But at the same time I’d be completely shamed if other people did know. It would be like admitting that I’m failing as a wife.

It isn’t my fault that he got laid off … again. It isn’t my fault that the hours were cut back at the hair salon … again. I’ve still got my regular clients, but walk-ins are few and far between these days … and so are tips. We’re lucky that his parents let us rent this little bungalow near Ybor for next to nothing. It used to be an apartment for cigar workers back in the 1910s. It is supposed to be “historically significant” but in reality it’s just a rundown little cracker box badly in need of some serious rehabbing. But I love it. The people in the neighborhood are a little weird but they’re mostly nice. And so long as the drunks from 7th Avenue don’t get too rowdy everything is good.

Daniel hates it here, hates the cameras at the intersections because he complains traffic isn’t all they watch; and most of all hates being beholden to his parents but I don’t see any way around it, we just can’t afford what he wants. He looks at the real estate listings and has all these crazy schemes and plans but doesn’t seem to know how to get from point A to point B. No matter how many times we talk about it, each time it’s like he is seeing the reality of our financial situation for the first time. Sometimes I wonder where his head is. If it wasn’t for my little garden and the fruit trees we’d really be hurting. And we avoid talking about the baby completely.

The only reason he seems to be anxious for the baby’s arrival is because it will qualify us for some assistance. But as soon as that is out of his mouth he is ranting and raving that he’ll be so ashamed and that his parents can never know. I don’t want to go on assistance either. Tri-care doesn’t pay for much but at least I have a good OB/gyn. I worry with the way things are going that it will be cut and I won’t even have that; that I’ll wind up having to go to the County Health Center and friends in the neighborhood tell me that’s a nightmare of red tape and bureaucracy and it’s really hard to find a doctor that doesn’t have the bedside manner of a Great White with a migraine and compulsive lecturing disorder.

I don’t have anyone that I can talk to about this, not even at church. His family has attended Edgewater since it was nothing but a little revival tent in someone’s back yard during the Great Depression. A great grand uncle was even an interim pastor there back in the 60’s. I can’t risk anything getting back to them because most would just about die of embarrassment and start the blame game. That’s if anyone believed me about how bad it is. They’ll say, “We warned you that you were too young to get married. You’ve made your bed, now you’ll have to lay it in.” Or they’ll say, “When we were first married, we made it on love and air. You just aren’t being wise stewards of the money God is blessing you with.” They’ll be nice and well-meaning about it, but it won’t make a bit of sense under the circumstances. And Daniel will believe them and then we’ll be back to him telling me I must be spending the money on junk and not on necessities and we’ll have to go through the receipts all over again which will just make him mad when he sees that he is the one that spends money on junk while I put food on the table, fuel in the cars, and pay what little rent his parents ask of us. God bless ‘em for that or Daniel and I would really be hurting.

Daniel wasn’t always like this. If I can just hold on. After the baby gets born everything will get better. He’s just under so much stress and his leg hurts. Rotten roadside bombers. If I hate anyone I think it is the man that did this to my husband. But after the baby is born he won’t worry so much and things will get back to normal. They just have to.

 

[Lake Lili]

Love this one too... I think they are all my favourites. Its like seeing old friends again.
Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[Kathy in FL]

2) Dear Diary,

Been too scared and upset to write. Daniel got in a fight and got arrested over in Pinellas County. He called his older sister – she’s married to some up-and-coming real estate lawyer named Mack I think I’ve met all of three times – because he needed to be bailed out and he knew I wouldn’t be able to come up with the money. Well when Mack found out what Trish wanted the money for he wouldn’t let her have it and then called Mr. Lowery and then the cow pies started to fly. It’s brutal; the whole time I was sitting up waiting for Daniel to get home he was locked up safe and sound … relatively speaking. Someone in the holding cells didn’t like his look and tried to rearrange his face for him … tried to arrange a few other body parts too.

His family blames me. I didn’t even know he’d been drinking. The doctors at the VA told him specifically not to, that it doesn’t go well with the pain medication he is on. Everyone seems to think that either I drove him to drink or that I should have known and gotten them involved before it got to this point. Some even blame me for not telling them how Daniel has been acting. Well I take responsibility for that last bit, but no one really knows the half of it because now Daniel’s father has outright forbidden me from telling anyone that his injury isn’t why he hasn’t been allowed to return to active duty.

I didn’t know myself the real reason why until two days ago. His primary care doctor got him into a program at the VA for substance abuse, but it meant I had to have a sit down with the docs and go over a bunch of paperwork because it included a semi-involuntary commitment to the hospital. That meant for legal purposes they wanted me on board with the treatment plan. What the doctor was saying wasn’t making any sense and I kept reading over the forms and that’s when I saw it. Daniel is on something called limited duty, actually it is something a little more than that which is why he hasn’t been receiving a paycheck from the military. I don’t understand all of it. He hasn’t been discharged … yet … but it looks like he is on his way to a Section 8 because he isn’t complying with some series of interviews he was supposed to have. Some tests are still pending – takes forever to move things along through the VA – and so are some evaluations. They were waiting for the final operation to take the pins out of Daniel’s leg but now … now not so much.

I feel like I’ve been kicked. And what really blew me away was when the doctor asked me to sign my name on a piece of blank paper and then walked with it out of the room. He came back in with some scary people and asked for my ID. Then some really bad stuff started happening. Apparently Daniel’s little sister signed my name on some forms and there was a lot of legal mumbo jumbo flying around that I didn’t understand except to know that it was bad. Then I looked at the date on the form and knew what had happened.

I explained to everyone that on that date I was still in the hospital recovering from a late second-trimester miscarriage or still birth or whatever you want to call it. That the car I’d been riding in had been t-boned by a truck whose driver had had a heart attack at the wheel and run a red light hitting on my side of the vehicle. I was in a real bad way and so was Daniel when he arrived stateside coincidentally to the accident I was in. I told them the family had just been trying to save me from knowing how bad off Daniel was and Daniel from knowing how bad off I was.

Some of the people at the VA bought it, some haven’t. I still don’t know where it’s going to end. For now, his dad is telling everyone Daniel had a mild episode of PTSD. Maybe that is what the problem is. I don’t know what to think right now and I’m not sure who to trust. All I know is that I am four months pregnant and I am scared; scared that I don’t know where this is going and if I’m honest, a little scared of Daniel now too.

 

[Kathy in FL]

3) Dear Diary,

Glory, glory, glory!! Best week in a long, long time. Daniel has been released from the hospital after being in there almost two weeks. They cleared his system, took him off the pain killers, and got him into outpatient therapy. I can’t even pretend to know what soldiers go through; Daniel refuses to talk to me about it. He says it’s not a fit topic of conversation in my condition.

My condition? Five months and all is well. Praise the Lord! I’ve been here before, but I was alone because Daniel was overseas. After the accident I used to wake up several times a night believing I heard my little boy baby that was taken from me and he was crying and crying and crying. Doesn’t happen so often now. I try not and dwell on it. I know the baby is in Heaven and one day I’ll see him, hold him. I have to believe that.

Maybe it was best my in-laws told the doctors that I didn’t want to see the baby. I know they were just trying to protect me. I was a mental and physical mess at that point. Things were really bad and I don’t know what I would have done without them. I know they weren’t really happy about Daniel getting married right out of high school, but they have really stepped up to the plate. With my family being mostly all gone I’m really thankful for Daniel’s.

But there isn’t a grave for me to put flowers on in remembrance. And most people act like the baby never even existed. No one ever says anything. I guess they are trying to be nice, but I’d rather hurt with someone mourning his loss with me than to be as alone in these feelings as I am. But enough of that, this was a good week, and I should be thankful.

I wish I had known sooner what was going on; I could have worked with the doctors to help Daniel. I think I would have understood how he was acting better, not taken it so personally and let it affect me so much. Not done things that probably made him worse. Maybe I would have noticed I wasn’t handling what I was going through very well either.

Daniel and I went to couple’s counseling at Celebrate Recovery night before last. He’s also in group therapy at the VA. And for the first time since his letters stopped he said, “I love you Aria.”

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[Kathy in FL]

4) Dear Diary,

I understand. I do. Recovery isn’t a straight line. People have setbacks. They fall off the wagon. I’m not supposed to take it personally. I won’t help anyone if I turn into a co-dependent mush melon. It’s just he’s never hit me before.

I look at the last entry in my journal and I think about how naïve I was. How I even stopped writing because I thought everything was going to be OK. I believed everything he was telling me and that it was going to be all right. We may eventually get back to all right, but nothing is ever going to be the same. Not ever.

As soon as he did it, he scared himself. As soon as he did it, he truly did realize what he’d done. As soon as he did it, he also realized everyone at the church’s 4th of July picnic had seen. What I saw was the pain and fear in his eyes and I did the worst thing possible. I stepped forward to comfort him and tell him it would be OK.

All I could see was his hurt and I wanted to fix it. Just like all the other times. And I made the same stupid mistake of forgetting that for him to really get better he’s going to have to take responsibility and ownership of his actions and learn to reroute the ruts in his thought process. I’d learned the same thing about my same old/same old reactions.

Behavioral therapy helps, but only as much as we apply what we learn. I can see that now. But in that moment, I just wanted to make him feel better and I forgot that Daniel’s go to reaction anytime he realizes he has behaved badly is to blame something or someone else for what he’s just done … and usually explosively.

That time he hit me with his closed fist in the side of my head and I fell to the ground. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was him screaming, “This is your fault! This is all your fault! I didn’t want to come today, but you made me!! I should have listened to my parents and never married you! Look at what you made me do!! You’ve ruined my life!!!”

I woke up on a gurney as I was being loaded into an ambulance. I heard Daniel’s mother crying, begging the sheriff not to arrest her boy … he was a good boy, if they’d just let her take him, she’d get him calmed down, he’d say he was sorry and everything would be ok, they were only making it worse by trying to force him into the car. It was horrible.

Then I saw Cal. Maybe it was unfair but I had to do something. I refused to cooperate until the EMT went and got him.

“Cal please. You’ve got pull.”

“Aria I’m just a deputy and there’s over a hundred witnesses.”

“Please,” I begged.

“Aria …” He stopped then took off his baseball cap and scratched the short stubble on his head. He was in civvies since he was off duty. “Look, I understand. He’s my cousin and it’s killing me to see Aunt June so upset. But …” He stopped and shook his head. “Aria you didn’t see it, but he resisted arrest and on top of that hit the sheriff and spit on him. My hands are tied.”

Knowing I was about to cross a line I asked, “Cal? What … what if he’s … what if he’s sick and not in control of himself? What could we do for him then?”

Cal looked at me real hard, the way I’d seen him look at people he thought were lying to him. “What do you mean he’s sick?”

So it came out. It would have come out one way or the other but this way it kept Daniel out of jail where he didn’t belong. He was Baker Acted for being a danger to himself and others. Now instead of Daniel being in jail I’ve been ostracized by the rest of the family for being the one to make it public. The only reason Mr. and Mrs. Lowery even speak to me is because the doctors at the hospital won’t tell them anything and his other doctors, the ones at the VA, won’t release anything to them either, not even if I give them permission. I guess that is payback for the “falsifying signature” incident.

The family is in a huge mess. Part of me wants to curl up in a ball and just die and get it over with. Part of me feels like it is all my fault somehow. The rest of me tries to control the anger at how unfair life is.

Why is it so hard to learn that lesson? Life is not fair; it never has been, it never will be. As a matter of fact fair doesn’t even exist … it is just a concept that barely applies to children’s games. No way does it have anything to do with real life. My big brother drowned when I was a baby and I don’t even remember him. Then my parents died, mom from cancer then dad from a heart attack. Next came foster care after my grandfather died and the court wouldn’t approve my great aunt and uncle to be my guardians because they were “too old” to take care of a teenager. I couldn’t believe it when Daniel asked me out that day after church. I’d already been half in love with him from the first time I saw him helping to collect the offering during the Youth services on Wednesday night. And then to have him want to marry me right after basic training before he was sent overseas, it was like a fairy tale. Getting pregnant on our three-day honeymoon was a bit of a shock but I had the baby to love while his daddy was gone … then I didn’t have him; he was taken from me too and I had no one to blame for that either, it is just one of those horrible incidences that happen in life. And now this with my Prince Charming.

It isn’t just the family this is affecting. There are people in the church taking sides too. I don’t think anyone is being malicious, you just feel powerless and don’t know why … but there are no answers, all you can do is deal with the way things are.

I’ve got an appointment with the pastor tomorrow to talk things out. He asked me to come by his office. He says he is trying to understand but I’m afraid he’s going to see something in me and that really will turn out to be my fault that everything is like it is. I never thought anything like this would happen. I can’t let it go any further but I just don’t know what to do. But if I’m the problem I have to know.

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[Kathy in FL]

5) Dear Diary,

I don’t know what I was so scared of. Going to see the pastor isn’t like going to the principal in school. He was gentle and compassionate and really supportive. And he didn’t take sides which was a relief. I’m so afraid people are going to think I’m the one making people choose. I don’t want anyone to take sides; it isn’t that kind of thing and it’s wrong. Daniel doesn’t really know what he is doing right now. I just need for people to have some understanding without being judgmental, to give us all some grace and time to figure things out. The pastor gave me that so I hope others can as well.

I could see the kindness in his eyes, it was real. Of all people he has probably seen an amazing amount of human suffering and can empathize. I suppose it’s his calling. I don’t think I could do what he does day in and day out. Seeing so much suffering would do me in.

But I can’t run from Daniel’s suffering, I can’t stick my head in the sand and wish it away. He’s my husband and I promised for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. I didn’t know what those words meant when I said them, but I’m beginning to now.

The detox is much harder on him this time. It has his demons chasing him in circles. The docs can’t give him any psychotropics until they can determine what is the result of his drug toxicity levels and what is due to his messed up brain chemistry.

No one was allowed to see him that first week; he was in complete isolation on the lockdown ward. The second week they took him out of isolation but they still didn’t allow anyone to see him. By the beginning of the third week the doctor’s asked me to come in so they could observe our interaction since he was no longer violent. I did, even though I was scared, and my heart is just about broke. There is something very wrong with Daniel. I hadn’t been in there five minutes before he became agitated and they asked me to leave for my own safety.

When Mr. and Mrs. Lowery found out I had been allowed to see Daniel they started making all sorts of noise about being allowed the same privilege. I think they were trying to put pressure on me through members of the church because I kept hearing that I was preventing them from seeing their son. No matter how many times I tried to explain things, that it wasn’t my choice but the doctor’s, no one seemed to believe me.

So I brokered a deal with his doctor. They’d get a chance to see him but it would have to be in a private room away from the other in-patients in case something awful or awkward happened. Frankly I didn’t think Mrs. Lowery would be able to handle it. Daniel doesn’t even look like himself these days. I tried to explain that to Mr. Lowery but he thought I was exaggerating and trying to scare them off and he wasn’t having it. Unbeknownst to me he’d asked the pastor and one of the deacons to come to the meeting that day as “objective observers.”

I was right, Mrs. Lowery nearly passed out. I was scared she was going to have a heart attack right there the way Daniel was talking to her, blaming her for things that I know could not possibly have been true. At the same time, he was trying to wheedle his father into getting him out of the hospital. I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave the room, but I could still hear what was being said. Some of it was pretty nasty. He claimed I wasn’t the girl he married; I was some imposter, because the real Aria wouldn’t have locked him up like he was some kind of monster. That I had been force feeding him drugs, abusing him sexually. That I was an alien and I was doing tests on him. That his military service was just a cover story that I used to kidnap him and do horrible things to him.

I had heard it second hand from his doctors; it was pretty much a running theme apparently. I had just never heard it firsthand. He just couldn’t believe I would force him to get help by refusing his demands to get him released. He refused to believe that I didn’t have any control over it. He’d been Baker Acted and it was up to the doctors at that point to say whether he was safe to be in the general public or not. And they were saying definitely not.

I was holding it together pretty good, or thought I was. The pastor came out and patted my arm, as did the deacon, but they moved to the center of the room when Mr. and Mrs. Lowery came out. That’s when it felt like I got hit between the eyes. Mr. Lowery looked at me calmly and asked, “What vile thing have you done to my boy to turn him into that?”

I could feel my knees buckle. I knew that Daniel’s parents were having a hard time dealing with reality. Heck, I have a hard time dealing with reality. If Daniel was my child I’m not sure how I would react. But to have him ask me that, and ask me that with the pastor and a deacon standing right there … it hurt, it hurt very bad. I have to forgive if for no other reason than my own heart, but it’s awful difficult not to hold a grudge over it.

At least now I’m not alone in this. The pastor got me into a waiting room chair before I fell down. Just more kindness on his part, something I’ll be thankful for the rest of my life, such a small act but it is something tangible that I can hold onto. My respect for the man just keeps increasing. He went and did the same for Mrs. Lowery as the military psychologist bluntly explained a few home truths to Daniel’s father.

“Mr. Lowery, your son is an addict. It has come to light that it started in high school when he began using performance enhancers and it progressed from there. The steroids and other drugs he has ingested since have played hell with his brain chemistry. An investigation has also revealed that although his wound was received due to an IED, it was intentional because he knew it was there and he walked into it anyway.” There was a collective gasp. I had already been told but hadn’t expected it to be so brutally revealed to his parents.

“The damage your son has, both mental and physical, is self-inflicted; not something anyone else did to him. Furthermore, if you desire your son to improve at all you will stop enabling him and encouraging him to believe that he can get better all on his own, that his only problem is that he listens to too many people tell him that he is sick and needs help. Well Mr. Lowery, you son is sick and he does need help, and unless you want him to continue to worsen you will stop attempting to circumvent his care and therapy.”

I still think that Mr. Lowery honestly believes that Daniel isn’t as bad as everyone is making him out to be; he is always better when his father is around and that makes Mr. Lowery believe he just needs time and the love of his family and he’ll get well. They believe that he’ll go back to the golden son they have always believed him to be, the son that never gave them reason to be disappointed … or at least did so rarely.

Marrying me was apparently one of those rare occasions. I have always known that Daniel’s parents hadn’t been thrilled when they’d first found out about Daniel and I getting engaged before he took off for basic training. But they’d seemed to decide to make the best of it. I have absolutely nothing to complain about as far as them being in-laws. Without them I don’t know where I would have been a few times. We’re from different backgrounds but they still acted like they respected me and accepted me if for no other reason than for their son’s sake and I decided I could live with that and offered them the same in return. I never felt left out or excluded. Never. They were always really nice.

I think that is what is making how they are right now so hard to take, so hard to understand.

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[Journey]

Oh this is good, very good! Looking forward to much more of this!

 

[moldy]

I can't tell you how much I appreciate all your work. Thank you.

 

[Kathy in FL]

6) Dear Diary,

More lies and subterfuge uncovered. Sometimes I wonder how I’ve survived all this time being this stupid. I found out that Daniel was getting military pay, it’s just that it was 50% of what he was paid on active duty. He hid that from me so he could spend it on drugs and “entertainment” … so he could “find some happiness in his miserable and lonely life.” Yes, that’s a quote. I’m not sure I want to know what the entertainment was though Daniel has tried several times to tell me. The look in his eyes and the grin on his face tell me not to listen, to get away from him when he starts down that path. The doctors said it was a form of self-medication; I’ll hold onto that thought rather than the specific details.

It isn’t really the money that is the problem however. When they finally released Daniel from the hospital he acted like he was fine and that everything was grand and on schedule … right up until he got to the house and then with his parents’ help him packed up all of his stuff and moved back to their home. It was all planned beforehand to keep me from saying anything to his doctors. Trish was there too, but it was to try to talk their parents out of what they were doing. Trish’s husband Mack – the real estate lawyer – was really getting bent and told Mr. and Mrs. Lowery that he wouldn’t have any part of this nor was he going to help them transfer Daniel’s benefits into their name; now that he’d seen what was really going on, he wouldn’t have any part of it.

“What benefits?” I asked oh so innocently, not knowing the Pandora’s Box I was opening.

Once I’d heard that Daniel had been getting money and misusing it while I’d been working my tail off at the salon and at everything else I could think of – even working in the garden by the light of the moon just to keep food on the table – I finally had had enough. I am seven months pregnant and I have to protect our baby if nothing else.

I talked to the social worker at the hospital and he helped me to arrange to be Daniel’s payee. That means that while technically the money and bank account still has Daniel’s name on it, it is only as a beneficiary should something happen to me and he doesn’t have direct access to it; I’m responsible for using it to pay his bills. Daniel also has been court ordered to adhere to the treatment plan designed by his doctors and he must attend any and all counseling sessions that are assigned as well as take the medication he has been prescribed as it has been prescribed. If he doesn’t, he’ll skip the hospital and go straight to jail. It was the only compromise the judge was willing to make after he heard from the hospital what had been going on.

Mr. Lowery has kind of been in shock for the last week or so. He hadn’t expected people to start turning against the way he has been handling things, especially not his daughter and son-in-law whom he was counting on for legal help and advice. I don’t want people to turn against Mr. Lowery, or Mrs. Lowery, or Daniel for that matter. But the man has to see that he isn’t helping Daniel. He can’t fix Daniel by praying over him, not when he has such anger and bitterness in his own heart. I’m worried about them. But I’m not sure what I can do at this point … and they’re only making it harder for all of us.

Cal and his wife came by tonight, brought me the kind of Chinese food I could never afford even though I love it, and to see if I needed anything else. When I saw there was something still on their minds even after I told them I was fine I asked them to just go ahead and spit it out. Cal looked in pain so it was Lily that told me, “Uncle Fred and Aunt June want you out of this house. They’re going to put it on the market and sell it since you won’t give up Daniel’s benefits check.”

“Huh?” I hadn’t even thought about that being a possibility; hadn’t wanted to think about that being a possibility. “What? Wait! I … I’ve got receipts and everything that I’m not using that money do to anything but pay his bills, the rest is in savings and I can prove it to the penny. I don’t even use it to pay the rent here; that comes out of my salon money.”

“They said if you don’t move willingly they’ll turn off the electricity and evict you for holding over. They showed Cal that you only have a month-to-month lease and that they can choose to not renew it any time they please for any reason.”

“That’s … that’s true,” I admitted. “They needed a lease for some kind of insurance inspection they had to have. But … but I’m … where will I go?! Do they really hate me that much?”

Cal said, “Of course they don’t!”

At the same time Lily said, “Yeah, they do. They have to blame someone because Wonder Boy has some nuts and bolts loose.”

Cal winced. I told her, “Don’t say that. So long as he stays in therapy and takes his medicine the doctors say there is a good chance that he’ll get better. He’ll be on meds for the rest of his life but things will eventually be near normal so long as he is careful and …”

“Honey, you’re fooling yourself. Daniel only goes to therapy because if he doesn’t he’ll go to jail. And nine will get you ten he’s not taking his pills right … he has his mom believing that the side effects are worse than what they are curing and that it’s all just poison. She’s taking him to some naturopath or something like that.”

The shocks were not over with. Cal said hesitantly and only after a long pause where I tried to absorb what I’d just learned, “Aria you need to know, they … they’re talking to a lawyer.”

Suddenly cautious I asked, “Why?”

“They’re investigating the possibility of helping Daniel divorce you. They … uh … they don’t think … um …”

Cal had stuttered to a stop. I looked at Lily and her worldly wise smirk and she told me, “They think you fooled around on Daniel, that the baby isn’t his. Is it true?”

If I had been able to get my head between my knees I would have but since I couldn’t I wound up waddling to the bathroom and puking my guts up and nearly passing out. I don’t have the words to describe how I’m feeling.

Cal and Lily offered to stay but I told them they didn’t need to, that I had a lot of thinking to do, and they both looked relieved … but at least they looked like they felt guilty for being relieved.

Of course it isn’t true that I’ve fooled around on Daniel. I never even thought about it. Why would Sleeping Beauty even consider fooling around on Prince Charming … he’s her … her savior, her dream, he fought the dragon to be with her. I just don’t have any idea why they’d think such a thing. I didn’t think I’d ever even put myself at risk of someone thinking that I’d do such an awful thing. The pastor said one time that he refused to even be alone in a room with a member of the opposite sex just because people can take things the wrong way and he never wanted to hurt his wife with even the hint of scandal. I took that to heart and played by the same rule. I still ask if a nurse can be in the office when I’m talking to Daniel’s doctors. This is awful.

Part of me is surprised and part of me isn’t that Cal and Lily were the ones that got nominated to deliver the news. They had marital problems early on too when people kept asking when Lily was going to have a baby and she flat out told them she didn’t want kids. It caused a bit of frostiness until everyone took the time to get over it and move on. So Lily has had her differences with the family, and she’s also a little on the rode hard and hung up wet side despite the fact that her daddy is some important something or other up in Tallahassee and Daniel’s family is … well, a little proper and stiff on occasion and don’t appreciate her uniqueness. Cal could have been a lawyer but instead chose to be a county deputy, a member of the Green Team, which kind of makes him a bit of an outsider as well on occasion. He works bad hours in really bad parts of town, sometimes undercover, and as a result can be kinda cynical and pop the fantasy bubbles held by the rest of the family which they hate. Daniel’s family can be a bunch of Pollyannas at times.

But none of that really matters right now. It doesn’t matter who told me – it might one day but it doesn’t right now. Now I just have to figure out how to deal with this next thing I’m faced with.

Where do I go? This little one-bedroom house is the only real home I’ve known since my grandfather passed away. I don’t count the seven foster homes in the three years before I graduated. Those weren’t homes; those were just way stations. The only constant in my life during those years was Edgewater. And now even that place seems to have been lost to me.

Now this house. Is God shutting all the doors and forcing me out the window because He has some kind of purpose for me out there? Or maybe it is my baby that He has a purpose for. They say life is made up of problems that only occur to make you better prepared to face the next problem. At this rate I’ll be the woman of steel. I don’t even want to imagine what troubles must lie in my future if I’m supposed use what is happening now to predict for how bad they are going to be.

I’ll never be able to afford even half of something like this little bungalow here in Tampa on what I’m barely bringing home from the salon. And we have to stay in Tampa so I can find work. Not to mention I’m seven months pregnant; who’s going to want a roommate that is knocked up and ready to pop? But there is no way I’m going down without a fight. No way. I might not be able to do this for myself but I sure as heck will do this for my baby. And for Daniel too.

Maybe Daniel can’t appreciate what that means right now. Maybe he never will. I can’t control that. I love him … not the same way I used to, but it is still love. That difference in how I love him doesn’t change the fact that I have a responsibility to him. We made vows on our wedding day. Daniel may have broken his but only under the duress of his sickness. I don’t have that excuse and I refuse to use it.

Daniel needs to be in therapy, and he needs to take his medication so that the therapy can actually help. I love Mr. and Mrs. Lowery too but this time they are wrong, and they’ve gone too far.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

7) Dear Diary,

Daniel is in prison and I’m in the hospital. I’m trying not to hate him. I know he is sick. But if my baby dies right now I don’t even think the prison walls will stop me from ripping his heart out like he has ripped out mine.

If not for Cal and Lily I’d be dead right now, my baby too. Instead I’m hooked up to all of these lines and tubes and my precious one is in NICU fighting for every breath she takes.

Lily brought me some stuff from the house. The doctors told her that I need to get things off my mind; that I was dwelling too much. That it wasn’t healthy. What else am I supposed to think about while I lay here helpless to change things? My baby could die. My baby.

I’ve been crocheting Feena … Josefina like my mother … a little dedication gown. My journal was stuck down in the bag with the thread and needles. I’m almost afraid to finish the gown, afraid it will be her funeral shroud instead. So I’ll write. Maybe that will make me feel better. I doubt it but for her sake the doctors say I have to try.

Mr. Lowery had called and asked to talk to me, he said that he wanted to ask me about a few things that Daniel had said that didn’t make sense. I wanted to ask him which things because Daniel was beginning to make sense less and less again. I met him for lunch but we never even made it in the cafeteria because all the man could do was cry. It was so strange; I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t the not knowing what to do that was strange but the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to do anything that came with it. It was like God was telling me not to get involved, that I wasn’t the one that Mr. Lowery was supposed to be turning to for answers. Not that I had any answers to give.

I went back to work but on my break I called the church office and asked to speak to the pastor. I asked him if he would anonymously put the Lowery family on the church prayer chain. I told him what had happened and how I had felt that things were going bad for them and that maybe they had trapped themselves without really thinking things through. I figured if any man on this earth would know what to do with that knowledge it would be Pastor.

Two days later I was boxing up the last few things in the house. I had decided to move to the only thing left of my inheritance after probate court had gotten a hold of everything. The twenty acres in Ruskin has been in my family since before Ruskin even came into being.

Most people think if you have any Spanish heritage in you that you are a Mexicano that must have crossed the border or that you are a “wet foot dry foot” Cubano. Not hardly. The Hispanic parts of my family were living in Key West back when it was called by its original name of Cayo Hueso and refused to be permanently resettled to Havana when England took over Florida in the 1700s. We moved back and forth between Key West and Cuba until about the time of the US Civil War when they moved to an area off the Manatee River that would eventually be known as Ruskin.

Quite a history lesson yes? I had this stuff drummed into my head from the time I was little bitty. Our family heritage may be Spanish, but we are American first and foremost. My parents believed we were just as entitled to be called pioneers as some other families were with less time on this country’s soil. My grandfather was even worse about it. He used to be a schoolteacher and missionary. The normally even-tempered man could turn into a real Florida panther if someone mistook us for descendants of the migrant workers that still live in the area. I heard that from the time I was little bitty too. We all lived together in that house until they died, one by one.

But I can’t think of that right now, if I do I’ll start crying again. The nurses say that it is stress and pregnancy hormones … only I’m not pregnant anymore, it’s my body complaining about that fact. It is trying to remember how not to be pregnant and driving me crazy in the process.

And I do feel crazy. But not as crazy as Daniel. God put me out of my misery before I ever go down such a path that far. Never let me harm my baby the way her father tried to harm both of us.

After I had called Pastor, he called and set up a meeting with Mr. Lowery at their home. He had a couple of the deacons – friends of Mr. Lowery – go with him. They saw that Daniel basically had his parents barricaded in their home. He was out of control, refusing to take his medication, and in general … well … acting crazy. Mr. Lowery and Daniel’s mother finally agreed that having him live with them was not healthy for anyone. With Pastor there offering moral and spiritual support they called Daniel’s doctors and arranged for him to be admitted to a special living facility until room could be made for him at the hospital again.

Pastor and the deacons stayed with them until Daniel came home and they informed him of the arrangements. I think that the others being there is what saved Daniel’s parents serious injury. Instead Daniel broke down and cried hysterically. They got him to take some sedatives and eventually he fell into a deep sleep. He was gone the next morning when Mr. Lowery got up for work. It had happened frequently so all they thought they needed to do was wait until he came back and they would take him to the facility. It didn’t work that way.

I was taping up the last box when suddenly Daniel was just there in the kitchen with me. He didn’t say anything, just stood there smiling like it was old times. He had something behind his back. I thought it might be a flower. He used to do that when we were dating. I thought it was sweet. I saved every one of the blossoms, pressed them between the pages of the giant dictionary that used to set on my grandfather’s bookshelf. His smile reminded me of the good times. I didn’t feel threatened in the slightest and I smiled back at him.

It wasn’t a flower; it was one of those baton things that people carry for self-defense. I lost count of the times he hit me, I was trying to protect the baby. Then a voice in my ear told me to be quiet, to stop moving, play dead. I figured it couldn’t be any worse than what was happening so I did. And amazingly he stopped.

He said, “No more crying Aria, none. I won’t put up with it. You’re trying to control me with all the crying and I won’t let you. They’re a disease and contagious. I won’t let your tears infect me the way you’ve gotten to other people. They’re poison, like acid eating my brain away.”

I think he said some other stuff, but I was too busy trying to ignore this ripping and burning feeling inside me. And then there was some noise from outside, but I was trying to figure out why I was so scared. Then I heard a scream and then not much else. The world slipped away.

Cal and Lily had stopped by to see if I wanted to go out to dinner, their treat. They’d taken a lot of interest in me and Lily had seemed fascinated by the whole pregnancy and baby thing. I think she might be changing her mind about having kids which will probably thrill Cal.

They said they sensed something was wrong as soon as they drove up and saw Daniel coming down the steps saying, “Took care of that problem. Took care of it like it should have been taken care of before. Not my fault. Nope, not my fault things turned out the way they did. No one listens to a word I say so it’s not my fault.”

Cal asked Daniel what he was doing there? If Uncle Fred had dropped him off because he wasn’t supposed to be driving. Suddenly Daniel took Cal off guard and growled then rushed him, but Cal is a big guy and deals with violent offenders and people trying to run away every day he puts his uniform on. Lily ran into the house before Cal could stop her and she was the one I heard scream. While Cal took Daniel down and subdued him Lily called 911. I regained consciousness on the way to the hospital only to discover I was in the middle of giving birth. Everything after that is just flashes of the same nightmare.

The baby wasn’t breathing, I stopped breathing. They’d get us both back up and breathing and then one or the other of us would crash again. I lost a lot of blood. Shock. All of that medical stuff that goes with it. I didn’t have to have a hysterectomy even though it was on the table if they hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding. The baby … my baby … is small. She has stabilized but they still won’t say whether she is going to stay that way or if there has been any lasting harm being forced from my womb prematurely and so quickly and violently. Only five weeks but it’s the way that it happened.

A lot of people have come by. At first I tried to be nice, tried to listen to them say how sorry they are that everything has happened the way it has. But I just couldn’t keep it together, not even for Daniel’s parents. The doctors don’t let anyone in to see me now except Lily and Cal. They say my blood pressure does nasty things when it is anyone else. And no one is allowed to see my baby, she’s still in the NICU and I’ve never even gotten to see her. I keep wondering if they are lying to me and she is dead just like my little boy baby and when I start talking like that the doctor smiles and the nurse puts something in my IV that makes me sleepy and the world goes away for a while and I can rest.

They promise that when I can stay unhooked from all of the machines longer they’ll let me sit by her little spaceship looking container in the NICU; I’ll be able to at least see her even if I can’t hold her. Right now they say we are both too fragile.

Her wee little arm is broken and so is her leg. That’s how hard Daniel hit me. Not even my body and all its cushion could protect Feena. I lost my spleen and a small piece of my liver. I may lose a kidney, they don’t know yet; it sure isn’t working the way it is supposed to according to the doctors.

I’m tired. I have to put this away before I fall asleep and someone finds it and locks me up the way they’ve locked up Daniel.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

8) Dear Diary,

I hope I never have to have another surgery in my life. They finally fixed my face. My jaw did not heal correctly and I sit here with my mouth all wired together from where they had to rebreak it, do some kind of bone graft, and while they had me out, they also put posts in so that when everything heals they’ll attach dentures where all of my teeth used to be. Most of them were cracked and broken, the surgeon said it was just better to start with a clean slate. I hate the way my mouth feels. I look in the mirror and I see a freak.

But at least I’m alive and so is Feena. I have to tolerate all of this that they are doing. They are trying to help me, I know they are. It is just that with every step I make that gets me closer to seeing my baby, it feels like I’m forced two steps back when I have to get something else fixed.

And I hate this tube down my nose and all of these blasted things attached to me and going in and out of my body. I hate people touching me. I hate the loss of what little dignity I had. My body doesn’t belong to me. Everyone has the authority to touch me and look at me like I’m some kind of science experiment. I told them the next time to just put a zipper in me, it’d be easier on all of us. The doctor laughed … but I wasn’t really making a joke.

Lily is the only one that understood but lately, maybe I’m whining too much because Lily doesn’t come by as often and when she is here she doesn’t stay long. It is like the hospital freaks her out or something. I tell her I’m sorry and tell her not to worry about it, if she needs to go to just go because I don’t want to upset her. The first couple of times she looked grateful but a little guilty, now she only looks relieved. I worry that I’m using up all of our friendship and haven’t given her enough in return. I want to think of a way to pay her back for all she has done for me but I don’t know if there is anything in this world enough to say thank you for all she has done.

God, here they come again. With all the blood they’ve taken from me I could have fed a village of hungry Transylvanian vampires.

 

[Lake Lili]

Terrific story! Great to read it again. Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[Kathy in FL]

9) Dear Diary,

If I could get down on my knees in prayer and praise I would. God will understand I think and know that I am kneeling in my mind even if I’m not with my body. That I’m dancing and singing in my heart, even if my feet can’t move like that right now.

I didn’t know if this day would ever come. I got to hold Feena today. And she is the most beautiful baby in the world.

Cal and Lily took pictures. They’ve been taking pictures for me all along I just didn’t know it. It was Cal’s idea when he realized I didn’t know whether to believe them or not that Feena lived. Lily is a really good artist and it is almost like one of those really, really expensive baby books that all the stars have done of their kids.

I couldn’t hold her for long. The little monitor that she is attached to started beeping and it scared me really bad but the doctor explained that it is actually a good sign that Feena gets excited when I hold her. Somehow, even though we’ve been forced to be apart for so long she knows who I am. Is it my smell? Is it the sound of my heartbeat? Maybe a little angel whispered it in her ear. I don’t know and I’m not sure it matters. All I know is that she knows me. She knows I’m her momma. And it is the best feeling in the world.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

10) Dear Diary,

We’re going home … well, not home, but out of the hospital. Feena and I are sorta in protective custody until they find Daniel. Daniel went from prison to hard lock up at the state mental institute. As soon as he was on his meds he seemed to come to himself though he professed to not have any memories of what he had done and he was totally remorseful. They put him in a step-down program so he could be observed to see if he was fit for any kind of legal proceedings. In the middle of being transferred he escaped and is now on the run. We aren’t sure where he is running to, but he is considered dangerous. The doctors are pretty positive that he’ll hurt someone again and want him committed permanently.

I’ve talked with his doctors and they seem to think that he is incurable, that something is drastically and chemically wrong with his brain. They did a cat scan and some other tests while he was locked up. There are no tumors, it isn’t epilepsy. It isn’t encephalitis. There are however some structural abnormalities compared to the cat scan and other tests that were done when he first arrived stateside. I didn’t understand a quarter of the technical explanations they were giving me.

One of the doctors – she seemed nice enough in a cold fishy kind of way – told me that some people can use drugs recreationally and they have absolutely no side effects. No one is sure why this is. Daniel is not one of those people. His brain, his physiology, for some unknown reason was exponentially affected by his drug use. The steroid use in high school unlocked the door. Daniel made the choice to shove everything and the kitchen sink through that unlocked door.

Not only is Daniel psychologically addicted to drugs, he is physically addicted to them as well. His dopamine levels are so erratic that it makes it next to impossible to find a level or combination of drugs that allows him any kind of existence approaching his former “normal.” Most of the time they basically kept him stoned out of his mind to keep him from being violent and extremely hostile.

In the same way an alcoholic can wind up with a “pickled” frontal lobe of their brain, Daniel’s horrible brain chemistry has created “holes” in his brain tissue where there shouldn’t be holes. How they explained it was that the club drugs that Daniel got into killed off brain cells … literally eating holes in his brain. I’ve seen the pictures; his brain looks like Swiss cheese … mutated Swiss cheese. It was a vicious cycle, the more damage Daniel did to his brain the more he craved the drugs which furthered the damage which increased the need for the drugs which replaced the neurotransmitters that his brain could no longer produce that regulated brain function and behavior, etc. and so on.

I hate to feel this way but thank God it isn’t something hereditary. The damage is all self-inflicted. The doctors also told me that although there is no reason to believe the addiction itself is hereditary I should still be aware and keep an eye on Feena so that if she is prone to addiction, she can choose a different path than the one her father chose.

Apparently while he was living with his parents Daniel became addicted to some new designer drug and it finally screwed him up so bad it tipped the scale beyond which his psyche could recover. He’s a bit like an Alzheimer’s patient in the early stages; forgetful, sometimes paranoid, sometimes violent, his old personality comes and goes, sometimes even disconnected from date and place. Lily, in her rather blunt way, said that they’ll find him dead under a bridge someplace or he’ll go zombie like that guy down in Miami and they’ll have to shoot him in the midst of eating some guy’s face off.

She and Cal got into a tiff over that one. It didn’t look like the first either, like maybe she had said it on purpose to be both honest but to get a dig in at Cal and Daniel’s parents at the same time. I don’t know what is going on. I feel so out of the loop.

And yes, I suppose I’ve forgotten to mention that I asked to see Mr. and Mrs. Lowery. They are not just Daniel’s parents, but they are Feena’s grandparents. I know the value of family. The situation is still too stressful for us to really be friends, but I wanted them to know that I would not stand in the way of them knowing Feena; that I had no intention of holding them responsible for what Daniel has done. I am cautious but if I could draw a picture of them and put it here dear diary, you would see how heart sick they are, how truly remorseful; it is etched into their faces by the new pallor and lines that weren’t there before.

I don’t know if there will ever be anything that can heal what is this broken; but Pastor told me that I had done the right thing to at least make a way for the healing to start. He said that the old saying about to forgive is divine is truer than what a lot of people understand. That the end of the story of Job proves that we forgive, not for others, but for ourselves and God because it is what He expects of us … and that it is the only way to move forward and down the next part of the path that God has laid out for us. I suppose that is true. It was only after Job forgave his friends for being so mean to him during his trials and tribulations that Job got back what had been taken from him by the devil. In layman’s terms he had to forgive to dump the garbage and hard feelings that was holding him back from life.

I try to forgive Daniel too. I have forgiven the boy that Daniel used to be. He had no idea where his choices were going to lead. And I really believe that he loved me and that we could have had something beautiful and wonderful forever. But this … this thing that Daniel is now – I don’t even know whether to call him a man - I’m not sure how to forgive what he is now. I get almost there and then he does something like run away and I’m scared all over again. Scared and angry.

His face is plastered all over the news and so is our story. I missed the first media circus by being in the hospital, but I get to see this one up close and in high definition. If Feena and I didn’t still need to see our doctors Cal said that he had some friends out of state that he would send me to but since we do, there goes that idea. Lily made a face when he said it and that is just one more thing that is making me uncomfortable.

Freedom is so close. I went from four gray walls in the hospital to the four beige walls of this efficiency apartment. At least I have Feena. And I’m grateful that people are concerned enough for us that they will go to all this trouble, but I want to try and move on and no matter what I do, it is like I am dragging an anchor named Daniel with me and that one of these days I’m going to hit deep water and the anchor chain is going to be too short and I’ll get pulled under and take Feena with me. God, please let me be strong enough to keep us afloat when that happens.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

11) Dear Diary,

Por favor, por favor, Dios padre. No dejes que lo que me dijeron es cierto. Por favor, que sea un mal sueño. Por favor, señor. No les dejes que se había ido.

---------------


12) Dear Diary,

Oh God, it’s true. Pastor came to tell me himself. They’re dead and he’s dead. I didn’t think anything could hurt this bad, not after everything we’ve already gone through.

---------------


13) Dear Diary,

The funeral was today. No one could look at me. I couldn’t look at anyone else. I feel so guilty. Trish is a mess and so is her sister. I didn’t know what to say. They didn’t either. No one did. I’m not sure there are words for what we continue to feel.

Mr. Lowery refused to leave town and go visit relatives out of state. He said if his daughters were staying then he and his wife would as well. That Daniel would never hurt them. God, how soon he forgot. Daniel needed money, money for drugs, and he would get it whatever way he could.

Trish and Mack were attacked in their home by a masked intruder. But they don’t keep cash in the house anymore. Mack isn’t making the big money he used to and everything that comes in has to go into the bank to pay bills. They even lost Trish’s expensive jewelry that used to be kept in their safe deposit box when the IRS confiscated it for back taxes even though their case is under appeal. They didn’t recognize Daniel, not even his voice; and even if they had he knocked them both out before stealing their car and heading straight for his parents’ house.

The neighborhood security force knew the car and didn’t suspect anything was out of the ordinary. But when neighbors reported hearing screams they rushed in, only by the time they got there it was too late. Daniel had committed murder and escaped by car again. Witnesses say he never even tapped the brakes. He flew over the retention wall at nearly a hundred miles per hour and into the water-filled canal that surrounds the gated community. Even had someone been able to get him out of the dark water right away it wouldn’t have done any good. The steering column of his father’s classic Cadillac – built well before air bags – had crushed his chest and everything in it.

So now it’s over … or … or … maybe not. Maybe this will never be over. I go to sleep and dream of the escalating nightmare my life has been for the last two years. I wake up to the nightmare of having everyone know my business. I just want to leave but I can’t afford to. Cal invited me to come live with him and Lily until everything blows over and I can get back on my feet. But I can’t do that. Something is going on between those two and I have a feeling that I need to stay out of it, not for my sake but for theirs. They’ve lived this with me for months now. They’ve lived this stressful nightmare more than just vicariously. I can never thank them enough. But I can at least give them the space to face whatever is going on in their lives with some peace, without my presence looming over them like some sick fog.

Trish stopped me before I could slip out the back of the chapel at the gravesite. She said that the reading of the wills would be tomorrow and that I need to be there. She said there were some loose ends that needed to be dealt with.

I was hoping to leave tomorrow to go to Ruskin, to hide out, to lick my wounds. I even have my little car all packed with what I could actually move and lift out of the storage unit where Cal and Lily had stored everything. If I can’t I suppose one more night in a hotel won’t kill me. LOL!

Did I really just laugh at that? God I’m so sick. How can I laugh at such a bad pun? And today of all days?

 

[Kathy in FL]

14) Dear Diary,

I am sitting here, in another motel room, this one off I75, eating cold fried chicken instead of the picadillo I had intended on making. I tried to stay in the house but there are roaches and spiders and palmetto bugs absolutely everywhere. I got to the grocery store right before it closed and bought just about every bug bomb and fogger they had left on the shelf. I can afford to do that … at least this time.

I’ll give them overnight to work. Tomorrow morning I’m going to the dollar store and buy a ton of cleaning supplies and I’ll be disinfecting everything, starting with the kitchen. Disgusting! My mother and grandmother would be horrified to see how bad off the house has gotten. That court appointed property management company has royally ripped me off. They kept it rented to pay their fees, the taxes, etc. but apparently they did little real managing except accepting rent checks. At least I have proof the taxes were paid and I don’t have to worry about that … but that’s about the only thing I don’t have to worry about.

I had called ahead and told them not to renew the latest renter’s lease and asked them if everything was OK. They told me yes. Lesson learned; never take anyone’s word when they say everything is “just hunkey dorey.” Does anyone really even say that anymore?

What a mess. So much for my fantasy. I guess it’s true, you never really can go home … at least not without a whole lotta effort.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

15) Dear Diary,

I’m getting really, really, really sick of living in motels. It might be cheaper just to rent a trailer for a month … or two … or three.


---------------


16) Dear Diary,

I have never seen someone’s face go quite that color purple. I don’t know who was angrier, Cal and Mack or the owner of the property management company when they got done with him. But it’s not like the guy could say much with a county deputy and a real estate lawyer all up in his face, raking him over the coals, threatening a law suit … especially not when he knew he’d been caught out skimming the account and not making the repairs that he reported making.

First off, they are going to pay for tenting the house and make good on all the repairs that they got paid for but never did. They are also going to treat the half acre lot that the house sits on. You walk through the yard and your legs are covered black in sand fleas. They are also going to replace all of the appliances with new ones. And they are going to paint the house inside and out and then clean everything from attic to crawl space. And when they are through with that they are going to return, with interest, the money they skimmed. Even after I pay Mack – not that he has asked for anything – Feena and I will have a nice little nest egg. At a bare minimum it should pay for the metal roof I want to have installed … fifty-year roof, oh yeah, I’m there. (Geez, I sound like an old woman … more interested in roofs than I am in much else.)

Now if I can just get the two of them to stop acting like I’ve lost my mind for wanting to live in my own home … “in the back side of nowhere” … instead of in Tampa where they can help keep an eye on me. I know the value of family. And sometimes its greatest value is in driving you nuts.

Poor choice of words under the circumstances but I’m so tired of having to be careful with every little thing that comes out of my mouth. They’re great guys, and they mean well, but I’ve got to stand on my own two feet. I’m 22 years old, not a baby. I wish they would stop explaining every way my plan could potentially fail. I can’t think for all their talking at me. I still haven’t even had time to absorb what came out of the reading of the wills.

I had no idea Daniel’s parents’ personal worth was as high as it was. I just thought they lived well, not that they were necessarily well off. Maybe I should have given the community they lived in, but a lot of people look rich but looks is all it is. What I found out sitting at that table was a lot to take in.

Even after all of their outstanding debts were paid off – which they had surprisingly few of – and they left a nice tithe to Edgewater, there was a lot of assets to split three ways.

“What? No … uh uh. That’s … that’s not right. They were your parents. I shouldn’t be getting any of this.”

Trish smiled and Amaris just sort of stared at me like I’d grown a third eye on the end of my nose. “Relax Aria. Dad and Mom had been talking about this. This isn’t a surprise to us. They kept us in the loop. Maybe you won’t believe me, but please try to. They’d come to regret how they’d treated you, come to understand that Daniel was a broken soul and that you were just doing what you did to try and protect him from himself.”

Quietly I asked, “Did your dad really say that?”

“Yeah, maybe not in those exact words but that’s what he meant. You haven’t heard this part of it yet but they set up a college fund for Josefina. Even if you hadn’t asked them to be part of her life they felt responsible for doing what they saw as part of their grandparently duty.”

I shook my head not knowing what to say. It was way more than I had expected. I thought I was there just as some kind of legal requirement because Feena would technically inherit whatever was left in Daniel’s estate. That was true but it was a little more complicated than that. Daniel had inherited some money from his paternal grandfather whom he was named after. He would have gotten it when he was eighteen but his parents changed that when they found out he wanted to go into the military instead of going to college and that he would have to be twenty-five before he would receive it. At his death, the money now belonged to me and Feena. In my eyes it was a lot more money than I had ever imagined having in the bank but now that I see all of the repairs and such that need to be made to the house, it doesn’t seem like that much. I mean it does seem like a lot but that it won’t go near as far as I imagine it could have under other circumstances.

There was also all of Daniel’s belongings to go through. His stamp collection. His coin collection. His rock collection. All of his sports memorabilia. His music collection. Clothes, furniture, the stuff that was left at the bungalow. I was stunned … am stunned. Crazy stunned.

Everything has been put into storage and Trish and Mack have moved into her parents’ paid off house. Amaris inherited the condo in Gainesville – also paid off since they bought it at the bottom of the market while Trish was in school – as well as most of the furniture in her parents’ house and she is ecstatic. She goes to UF now, her serious boyfriend lives there, and all she wants is to finish her degree and go to work at her uncle’s design firm. They already found a buyer for the bungalow – the City. The house is coming down so that they can put in a retention pond that will drastically improve the drainage in the area and prevent flooding. I went in and took out some of the antique light fixtures and a few other things … including the old claw foot tub from the bathroom. There was a little bit of cussing over that one … Cal and a couple of his buddies had not expected the thing to be quite as heavy and unwieldy as it was even though I had told them it was made of cast iron. Everyone laughed afterwards but only because I rewarded them with hot boliche and cold beers.

Given everything that is going on, Feena and I are in Tampa as much as we are in Ruskin. We’d have to do a lot of this back and forth anyway to see our doctors but it is so tiring. And I’m getting to know the desk managers at the two motels we travel back and forth between on a first name basis. That’s scary.

 

[Kathy in FL]

17) Dear Diary,

Trust Cal to come up with a solution so I wouldn’t have to live in motels forever and go broke in the process. He and Lily have a little travel trailer that they used to use all the time when they first got married … at least until Lily ran into a snake one time when they took it out of storage. Now she won’t have anything to do with the trailer and considers a night at the Econolodge as close to roughing it as she wants to get.

“It’s just sitting there on the storage lot. Someone might as well get some use out of it,” he said sarcastically after he realized it was useless arguing with me.

“Well, I’m going to pay you rent because it could be three months or more before I can move into the house full time.”

“Oh no you won’t.”

“Oh yes I will.”

“No, you won’t. And before you start arguing again let me tell you why.” I shut up but only to give him time to persuade me, I wasn’t stupid, but I was bound and determined to refuse charity. He cleared his throat and then sighed and a lot of the fight just seem to go out of him. “Lily and I are in counseling Aria.”

I sat down beside him in slow motion. We both dangled our feet off grandfather’s dock. “When did this happen?”

“It’s been coming for a while, but we started two months ago. Don’t be so surprised; we’ve been down this road before. We were in counseling almost the entire first three years of our marriage.”

“Um, not that it’s really any of my business but is it the baby thing?”

“Yes and no,” he admitted. “I want kids. But I want my wife more … or did. Still do I think. I’m not sure right now.” Rather more matter-of-factly than I thought any man would say it, he told me, “She slept with a guy. Same guy she had an affair with six months after we got married.”

I swallowed and wondered what to say that didn’t make things worse. “I … um … I …”

“I know you didn’t know. Not too many people do. Not exactly something I want to get out and about. My parents knew but they took it to the grave with them. My older brothers know but they kind of washed their hands of the whole situation when I refused to divorce Lily over it the first time around.” He shook his head like he was confused or maybe shell shocked was a better term for it. “Uh … the guy … he’s like her first love from high school. She married me on the rebound when he needed a little space and started tramping around Europe to find himself or some crap like that. I just … it caught me … off guard … happening again. I know that she’d been having a lot of second thoughts about our marriage. She was mad that I didn’t make detective. I tried to tell her it was just a budget thing but she thinks I did it on purpose to stay on patrol. She thinks I love my job more than I love her.”

More than a little uncomfortable about the sudden revelations I asked, “What … er … what does this have to do with the trailer?”

“Lily and I had a rip-roaring fight the other night. She … uh … she said that if there was a divorce she was going to make sure she got her share of everything and then some for putting up with me all this time. It … uh … worries me. Her parents have money. They could hire a lawyer that would take me to the cleaners in half a second. I’m thirty years old Aria … I don’t want to go back down to zero, living on ramen noodles and oatmeal. It’s taken me too long just to get where I’m at right now, and I’ve had to scrimp and save to get this far. If she does what she threatened it could take me another ten years – maybe longer – to just get back to zero. I’ll be on the other side of forty and barely have anything to show for it.”

Still not sure I understood where he was going with this I asked, “You want to hide the trailer out here so that she can’t find it? I’m not sure that makes sense. She knows where I live Cal … and aren’t you thinking worst-case scenario too soon?”

He sighed. “If this situation with Daniel taught me nothing else, it taught me that the worst-case scenario is exactly what I need to prepare for. If it doesn’t happen then great; but if it does, I don’t want my bare butt hanging out in the wind for the whole world to see. I don’t want that kind of regret.”

Worried about his state of mind I told him, “Ok, so bring your trailer out here. I can’t believe Lily would ever do that to you but if it makes you feel better to do this … and she finds out … you can at least tell her you’re just doing me a family favor.”

“It isn’t just the trailer.” He saw my concerned look; I have Feena to think of now and as much as I love Lily and Cal both and appreciate all they’ve done for me, I have to put her well-being first. “Don’t worry Aria, I’m not talking about money or anything that, certainly nothing illegal. I just want to cache some of my guns and ammo out here. A few other things too. She almost kicked me out of the house during the fight and if she does that the law is on her side and I might wind up losing some of my stuff or having her say that she is in fear of her life or something and … I get a swirly at the hands of some lawyer. Her parents have never exactly been thrilled with my gun collection, they’d love to have an excuse to … never mind, I’d just lose ‘em, probably never see them again and most of them belonged to my dad and his dad and I … I just can’t take that chance.”

“Cal, you know she’ll notice if things start disappearing from the house like that.”

“No she won’t. Most of that stuff has been put into storage since we got married. When her parents start making comments about something being in the house, or she made noise about not liking something, I would ‘get rid of it’ by hiding it in the storage container. She’s never even gone with me to see it; the thing was originally rented by my parents, I just inherited the contract. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have a clue what all is in there. But she knows where it is at and technically it could be force sold at auction so that the cash can be split 50/50.”

I still don’t think that Lily would ever do anything like that to him but Cal … well he was there – he AND Lily – when I needed them to be. If this helps Cal not to stress so much then of course I won’t object. He says it will also save him the lot rent and the storage container rent which is getting more and more expensive. He says he’ll be able to save that money in case he and Lily have to separate and he has to get an apartment until they can work things out. I hate to even think about it.

As bad as things got with Daniel, as horrible as it was, as horrible as the memories still are, at least I can say he was sick and didn’t know what he was doing. Somehow it seems so much worse when people tear each other up and they know exactly what they’re doing, that there are no excuses for their choices.

---------------

 

[Griz3752]

Given everything that is going on, Feena and I are in Tampa

A minor quiblle (very minor - you have no idea how many typos I generate in about 1000 words, let alone a multi-part story) & I'm not sure you have time to correct it. I think I saw the same around Chapter 3-4 but can't be sure

 

[Cedar Lake]

Given everything that is going on, Feena and I are in Tampa,

A minor quibble (very minor - you have no idea how many typos I generate in about 1000 words, let alone a multi-part story) & I'm not sure you have time to correct it. I think I saw the same around Chapter 3-4 but can't be sure.

Griz3752, I believe ''Feena'' is an abbreviation for Josefina...........

Cedar Lake

 

[Kathy in FL]

18) Dear Diary,

I am soooo irritated. I spilled bleach on this journal. I was able to save most of it but the last three months of entries are just completely gone. All of that writing I did on all of the repairs and home improvement projects I’ve been working on just gone like they never existed. All the nights I spilled my guts trying to understand my life. All the tears I shed. Grrrr. If it isn’t one thing it is another. It is like the whole world is conspiring against me.

But I’m not going to repeat all the complaints that got bleached away. Maybe this is God’s way of telling me that what is in the past stays in the past and I don’t need to repeat it or dig it back up; that it is just dead bones and I need to learn to let them lie. So let’s focus on the positive.

Today I u-picked strawberries again. The kitchen is full of strawberries, overflowing with strawberries, is flooded with big, bright red, delicious strawberries. I’ll be capping and canning and drying strawberries for at least three or four days. I love it. I better love it, strawberries might be the only thing we’ll have to eat in a few months.

I still can’t find a job. The garden pretty much futzed out. I put it in in a rush and the only thing that made were the collards and turnips … thank goodness I’m not picky but man did it give me gas to have to eat so much of them.

A freeze killed two of my orange trees. The porch leaks. One of the barn doors has fallen off the hinges and I can’t even lift the stupid thing to try and fix it.

Wait … I said I would focus on the positive.

Not finding a job has allowed me to stay home with Feena and spend all the time with her that I missed when we were both in the hospital. I carry her in a sling everywhere I go, even here at the house. It saves on the heating bill since I haven’t been able to get the propane tank refilled since the new “environmentally safe” tank is on backorder. If I worked, Feena would have to be in daycare and we’d both be miserable.

The chemicals they treated the yard with pretty much killed all the beneficial stuff in the ground and the nematodes moved in. But I figured out what went wrong and I’ve put black plastic over the garden area and I’m going to solarize it all summer long so that when it is time to plant this fall, the ground will be healthy and nematode free. For now, I’m growing things in pots in the patio area. It means a lot of extra watering, but I set up these little drip hoses like my grandfather used to and put the hose on a timer so I’m not constantly having to worry that I’m forgetting something. The iron in the water stains everything and the sulfur makes it stink but at least the house has a water treatment system on it, and I have a huge supply of salt and chlorinator tablets thanks to a former tenant that left pallets of the stuff in the barn. The salt takes out the iron, the chlorinator takes care of disinfecting and the sulfur smell in the house. Win-win and it hasn’t cost me a penny yet except for some new drip irrigation pipes and fittings that I picked up at the handy dandy hardware store where they now know me on a first name basis.

I did lose two of the oldest orange trees, but they were reaching the end of their lifespan anyway. I have since replaced them with several fruit trees that I found on sale at the hardware store. Now in addition to citrus trees and Florida pears I have some Anna apples and a couple of peach trees. I was able to prune my mother’s Santa Rosa and Natal plums and the Turkey fig trees, and they look much healthier than they did when I first moved back home.

Cal came by one weekend and helped me to prune all the dead wood out of the grape arbor. He ran off several snakes but I told him not to run them off too far because they keep the river rats down to a minimum and keep the field mice and roof rats out of the house.

I trimmed back all the dead banana tree leaves and found I had several bunches of both bananas and plantains that hadn’t been attacked by the possums. Lucky me. Lucky Feena … she loves rice cereal with a little bit of banana mashed into it. She’s not a picky eater thank goodness since she can only have formula, rice cereal, and bananas right now but she does have her favorites and mashed up banana ranks really high on her very short list.

I canned banana pulp so that I can afford to give it to her all year. The price of bananas at the store had me worried I’d only be able to buy one or two for special occasions. I wasn’t turning my nose up at fried plantains either; breakfast, dinner, or dessert … it doesn’t matter to me, I love ‘em anyway I can get them.

The Barbados, Surinam, and Grumichama cherries all are coming back after a good pruning as well. Momma used to make preserves out of them that were absolutely beyond better than anything you could ever get at a high-end gourmet shop. She used to make a little money selling the pretty little jars at the flea market until they got so sticky about having a license from the health department.

Speaking of the flea market, there’s a nice little old man that has told me to come by his produce stand Sunday after church and he’ll sell me as much as I can buy of the fruits and vegetables that won’t hold over until his next day open. I take him up on it every Sunday and he’s never failed to send me home with a trunkful. I’m grateful for the largesse and he’s grateful to make something on the stuff rather than just throw it in the dumpster. He said it used to be he could give it to the homeless shelters and food banks, but their insurance doesn’t allow it anymore. That’s crazy I told him. That’s the government he told me.

So maybe I was feeling sorry for myself and exaggerated and Feena and I won’t starve. As a matter of fact, I had to convert one of the upstairs bedrooms to a pantry and it is a pain hauling things up and down the back stairs, but I’m worried about the floor in the pantry off the kitchen. The floor in there really squeaks and I think one of the floor joists has rotted through. I’ve got it jacked up right now with a car jack I bought at the flea market, but I know I need to get it fixed … and sooner rather than later. I just have no idea how much it is going to cost.

But enough of the scary stuff. Let’s get back to happy stuff.

When the property management team was cleaning out the house we discovered that the attic had never been emptied. Most of it was junk from my grandparents’ day and before but some of it was abandoned property from various tenants that just stuck stuff up there and then forgot it – probably kinda sorta on purpose – when they moved out. There was like a gazillion and two jars up there and I splurged and bought these reusable lids I saw in a magazine called Tattlers. My grandmother and mother would have loved them. I still have the old style lids and rings too but the other ones are kinda cool beans and make me feel like I’m advancing our quality of life for the better.

Emptying that attic of all the flotsam of by gone days … and getting rid of what wasn’t useful like rotted carpets and shattered silks … gave me a place to store all the stuff from Tampa. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to go through Daniel’s stuff, except very cursorily, and it was a relief just to put it in plastic tubs so I wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while. I made myself put away the shoe boxes of photographs and arrange the photo CDs and memory sticks but as soon as I did I shut the door on the glass built in cabinet and haven’t touched them since. For now, my yesterday needs to stay shut away so that I can find the energy for our today.

As time and money permits, I have been changing out fixtures and replacing the cheap plastic things put in by the management team over the years with the antique ones from the bungalow and with those I found in the attic. It’s a good thing that Papa and my father insisted I learn how to do simple repairs around the house or I’d be paying through the nose for some help or being forced to wait for Cal or one of his friends to lend me a hand when they come out for a day of fishing on the river. Cal now has his boat docked here and comes out two or three times a month with friends … but Lily is never with them. I pray for them every night. I just don’t understand how something that seemed so good has gone the way it seems to be going.

Cal and Lily are still in counseling but that’s a good thing at this juncture. I think things are going better but Cal doesn’t talk about it much to me and I haven’t seen or talked to Lily at all even though I’ve called her and left loads of messages. I hear about it all from Trish who I talk to once or twice a week. She’s really serious about us staying a family. I haven’t seen her in a while either though, gas has gotten crazy expensive again and if Cal hadn’t told me to buy a bunch of gas cans and keep them filled I might have been stuck a few times. I don’t travel any more than I have to, but it’s nice to know I can if I need to.

Oh, and I have a couple of goats. I have absolutely no idea where they came from. I just woke up one morning and there they were on the back porch eating my potted geraniums. Dude, when they say goats will eat practically anything they weren’t kidding. I finally had to get really long dog chains to keep them from eating everything in my garden – not that by that time they could really do all that much damage – but you don’t even want me repeating all the damage they did do. I finally stopped putting signs up asking for someone to come claim them. Mr. Escudero – the little old man from the produce stand – said that someone probably dumped them figuring that they’d be able to live in the pine groves and palmettoes.

Different people have had different reactions to the goats. My neighbors – all of them affluent and slightly worried that I was going to bring down property values yet afraid to quite say it since I’d done so much improving to the property to make it look better than it had in years – just asked me to keep the goats’ poop scooped so it wouldn’t stink things up. I nearly laughed in their faces. Goats are not dogs and you do not scoop their poop. Papa had goats, ornery little goats, and they pooped anywhere they wanted to and Papa was happy to have it that way so so am I. If they don’t like it too bad. My family has owned this land a heck of a lot longer than any of them have even been around. I’m not going to be intimidated by some nouveau riche newcomers. Ooops, now I sound like Papa and Daddy.

The local humane society offered to give me a heads up if they got any more goats. I think they were just looking for a sucker to take what they consider an exotic animal off their hands so they wouldn’t have to kennel them for any length of time. I have to be careful about going there again though. That’s how I got suckered into giving a home to a one footed goose and a pig who promptly delivered a litter of seven adorable piglets within days of decorating the pen I built for her with her first wallow. I’ll never tell that lady at the humane society but at least a couple of those piggies are going to make some mighty fine pulled pork come this winter. I think they are all religiously vegan and would be horrified at my carnivorous appetites.

Trish and Amaris both had a few things to say about my new menagerie, but it was Cal that made me laugh the hardest.

“I said their names are Buffy, Willow, and Xander.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Cal gave a stupefied look at the beasties that had just tried to eat the seat out of his swimming trunks … with him still in them.

One of his friends chortled and said, “The way Cal is giving them the eye you might want to rename them rare, medium, and well done.”

I gave Cal a forbidding look and he held up his hands in surrender. “You’re going to go broke feeding this zoo.”

“Nope; at least not the goats. They seem to really like the brambles and palmetto thickets. They’ve cleared almost another acre of that mess and now I can mow it with the riding lawn mower instead of with Papa’s old DR.”

“You stay out of there, it’s full of snakes,” Cal ordered, acting all grumpy and grandfatherly.

“Stop worrying so much. The goats drive the snakes deeper into the woodlot. They’re actually doing me a favor clearing that land; less chance of finding another rattler in the well house.”

Cal and his friend Josh both grimaced comically. I didn’t blame them since they’d been the ones to find the rattler. But I don’t understand why Josh got all wiggy when I offered to cook it since they’d killed it. Papa and Daddy had taught me how good rattler is so long as you know how to get the spine out without leaving all the little bones in there … about like fish if you think about it.

And the skins are really pretty nailed to the boards of the old barn too.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

19) Dear Diary,

Had Daniel lived he would have been twenty-three today and we would have been married a little over four years and been together almost seven. He was my high school sweetheart and the only guy I’ve ever been in love with. And despite everything it hurts that that part of my life will never be coming back, that Daniel will never be coming back, that the memories have been tainted by what happened.

For so long I’ve been pretending. It helped to keep myself so busy there wasn’t time to think but I doubt I can build the wall any higher to keep it all out. It is sloshing around on the other side of that wall like high tide during an oncoming hurricane. I thought I was done mourning, but I guess not. I suppose I was just fooling myself again.

I drove to Tampa to put flowers on his grave. I tried not to, tried not to put myself through it. But before I knew it I was putting the animals up and then strapping Feena into her car seat. I turned around twice, once at the end of the road and once right before I got on the interstate on ramp, but I couldn’t make myself go all the way back home. And once I was on the interstate there was no turning back.

I know things ended badly for all of us, but I still owe him for the good times, and he is still Feena’s father. As long as I can see I’ll never be able to deny that. She may have my skin tone and hair, but she has his eyes. Sometimes I look at them and can’t help but cry.

He’s been gone months now, but Daniel managed to surprise me again, not once but twice. I stopped in the Grow Credit Union to close our old account since I didn’t think there was but a couple of dollars left in it when low and behold I discovered there was several thousand in there. It took a while and several phone calls to track it down but we did. The military never completed the discharge on Daniel. Clerical didn’t understand it; it’s like all the paperwork on his Section 8 simply vanished into thin air and now that he’s dead no one seems too interested in pursuing the matter. By rights all benefits should have ended a long time ago. And yet, there it is.

I got the second surprise when I went to visit some friends from the old neighborhood. I was bracing myself before going to the cemetery and delaying it though I find it hard to admit. Hueby and his girlfriend Virginia still have their little audio/video store … they sell used records, transfer and dupe tapes, that sort of thing. I stopped by their place and after ooo-ing and aahh-ing over Feena, Virginia nudged Hueby and said, “You should give it to her.”

“You sure?” he asked her.

“Yeah. I told you the stars said we’d have an unexpected visitor today and we’d finish a job long overdue … well, tell me this doesn’t fit.”

I let them talk, sometimes that is all you can do with people when they seem to be speaking a language you don’t understand.

Hueby then went into his work room and came back out with a shoe box in his hands. He handed it to me and said, “I didn’t know what to do with this. Daniel gave me this job way back, before his demons carried him off. I saw how used up you were over everything and just held onto it all. The end came and I really didn’t know what to do with it then either. But Virginia says the stars are speaking so here you are and I reckon it’s time.”

I carefully opened the box not knowing exactly what to expect and it was full of old photos and memory sticks and a jewel case with a DVD in it labeled “To Aria With Love.”

“He asked me to work something up. Said something about it being for your anniversary. Reckon it is late, but maybe it isn’t. Life doesn’t move by our arbitrary timetable.”

Like I said, sometimes you let people talk because it is in a language you don’t understand … you let them talk because when you finally do understand it is about more than you can handle and you wish you could have your ignorance back.

It’s like the last bit of something left of Daniel has done his best to continue looking after us, tell us that he loved us. The good part of Daniel. The part I miss so much, especially at night when I’m all alone.

It isn’t the sounds of the night that bother me. I know every creak and groan this old house makes like an old woman knows the snores of her old man. It’s the sounds that are missing that want to destroy me. The way he would get stuffy at night and wind up only being able to breathe through one nostril. The sometimes embarrassing sounds made when you share one bathroom in a house way too small. The sound the bed makes when you aren’t the only one in it. And when he would talk in his sleep and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at how silly it sounded. It is the lack of those sounds that tells me how alone I am.

I went to the cemetery and I was tempted to leave the box right there on his grave, but something told me I would regret it if I did. So instead I left the flowers that I had bought at the grocery where I had stopped to get a sandwich and a coke for lunch. I looked at his headstone and realized he wasn’t there. Whatever was there wasn’t the Daniel I married; that man was in Heaven with his parents and our boy baby. Whatever demons drove him while he walked this earth can’t reach him where he is at now.

Afterwards I went back to the credit union and finalized the paperwork and transferred the automatic deposits to the little bank that I set up an account at that is closer to where we live now. If I’m smart and careful the benefits will last us a long time. It amounts to almost a thousand dollars a month between one thing and another. That’s almost three times the amount of the social security survivor’s benefits that Mack insisted on applying for on behalf of Feena and I. Part of me feels guilty and part of me is thankful for this “found money.” I don’t know if we are really entitled to this money but Feena has to have special formula and it costs an arm and a leg. I never did get my milk back once it dried up, nothing I tried made a difference and all those nursing mothers groups made me feel kind of useless since I wouldn’t pay some other woman to pump milk for my baby. I don’t guess I’ll ever know what it is like now.

With that done I tried to stop by and see Lily. Tried being the operative word. She wouldn’t talk to me much. She said she wasn’t mad at me she just didn’t want to talk to me or see the baby. That I brought up bad memories and that she was cutting herself off from all of that and that if I was her friend and wanted her and Cal to stay together I’d just have to honor her wishes.

I didn’t have a clue how cutting me off specifically was helping her and Cal to stay together but I didn’t ask the question. It was like she was looking for an excuse, looking for some way to say that it was not her fault if they don’t stay together and I didn’t want to be the one that gave her that excuse. She doesn’t care if Cal sees me, she just doesn’t want to see or hear from me, doesn’t want any more phone calls that make her feel guilty. Certainly doesn’t want to hear a word about Daniel’s spawn. That’s exactly what she called Feena … “Daniel’s spawn.”

I didn’t understand and by the time I showed up on Trish’s doorstep I was nearly in tears. Trish did burst into tears when she saw me. “I knew you couldn’t stay away. Let me guess, you went to the cemetery.”

We boo-hoo’d for a few minutes and then we sat down and she and Mack fussed over Feena and cooed that she was getting so big and we exchanged news that didn’t make it into our weekly phone conversations. After Mack left to go take a business call I spilled the beans about my visit to try and see Lily.

“I just … I meant to come here first but then I just had this feeling that I had to go see Lily, that I needed to know why she hasn’t returned any of my phone calls. Trish, did I do something? Did I do something wrong? I don’t understand.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong Aria. Lily has been cutting us all off one by one. It’s like she is testing Cal … testing him to see if he’ll try and force her to do something or say something or go someplace she doesn’t want to go so that they can have a spectacular blow out, but it won’t be her fault because she has warned him all along.”

“Cal never said anything. Nothing.”

“Probably trying to protect you while trying to not rock the boat at home. You know he feels guilty that he didn’t do more to protect you and Mom and Dad.”

I shook my head. “He couldn’t have done anything. He shouldn’t think that at all. If it wasn’t for him and Lily I wouldn’t be sitting here, Feena couldn’t be sucking down this bottle like she’s going to turn it inside out. That’s crazy talk.”

I could have bitten my tongue but Trish didn’t seem to notice. “Crazy or not that’s how he feels. He was out patrolling that night, taking an extra shift; looking in Daniel’s old haunts thinking he might be wandering around lost and confused. Mack and I both told him there was nothing that he could have done even had he been right there; just get himself hurt or killed too. What good would that have done anyone? Whatever occupied Daniel’s body that night, it wasn’t my little brother; he was already dead to us.”

She saw the look on my face. “And don’t you go feeling guilty either. Bad things happen. We don’t know why most of the time. I know some of this was the natural consequences of Daniel’s choices but … but between you and me I’ve still got questions come the Pearly Gates. I’ve decided for my own peace of mind though to file them away ‘til then. It doesn’t do me, or any of us, any good to sit around dwelling on what might have been or could have been. All that’s left is to find some lesson in it and move on.”

“What kind of lesson can be found in that mess?”

“Well, Mack and I have decided that there’s no time like the present. That we can’t keep putting things off hoping life is going to get better.” A little mischievously she whispered, “He got unfixed.”

“He got un … you mean he went and had the procedure?”

“Yeah. I love his kids but we want to have some together and since he’s going to be forty pretty soon … he says he doesn’t want to be wearing Depends when our baby is still in diapers.”

I choked at the normally proper woman making what was for her a rather risqué remark. Then she grinned and looked at me. And I knew. She said, “Baby ain’t shooting blanks these days.” The tea I was drinking nearly shot out of my nose and I choked so hard I nearly missed hearing her due date.

Mack came back in and he was red all the way to the tips of his hairy ears. “She tell you?”

“Yes! Congratulations!” If possible he got even redder but he was also grinning from ear to ear. I’m happy for them. Really. I am. The feelings just haven’t gone from my brain to my heart yet.

They tried to get me to stay but I needed to get back here and check on the animals. I also thought leaving Tampa I would be able to leave the memories behind.

But when I put Feena down and got up the nerve to watch the DVD I finally admitted that some part of me will never escape the memories.

---------------

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[Kathy in FL]

20) Dear Diary,

Yesterday was a hard day; lots of memories, the good overshadowed by the bad no matter how I tried to spin it. I had the old nightmare again last night … I heard crying and crying and crying. Then I was crying which woke up Feena and she started crying. Then the sky opened up and it was like the angels were crying.

Today hasn’t been much better and I’m exhausted but too wired up to sleep yet. I hope writing it out will give me some sense of what direction I need to take in the coming days.

I woke up this morning with an awful headache and I craved coffee but too late discovered that I’d run out. I looked around the house and realized there were a lot of things I was almost out of if I wanted to keep canning and drying stuff. I also needed to go by the feed store and pick up a few things for the zoo.

It has been a while since I went to the store. What I can’t get at the flea market or scratch and dent discount shop I usually buy in bulk and then just use it up and don’t go again until I’m almost out. I made a list and then got Feena ready for a day of shopping; something that was not a favorite activity for either one of us. I’ve discovered taking a baby anywhere is like going on safari … and not the fun kind either, but into crocodile infested waters surrounded by mosquitoes the size of B52 bombers, and if that wasn’t enough the cannibals that hide behind every tree and … well you get the picture even if I am exaggerating a bit.

Last couple of times I’d been out I had noticed that the flea market food stands and the scratch and dent store shelves were getting a little lean but they do from time to time and then they fill back up. I never realized the same thing was happening at the regular grocery stores. And the prices were out-freaking-rageous. They were so bad all I did was buy a case of Feena’s formula and I almost didn’t get that except I keep the letter from her pediatrician in my purse saying that it is the only formula she can have. The pharmacist was able to write it out.

“What’s going on?”

“Shortages and restrictions,” the lab coated woman explained.

“On baby formula? Seriously?!”

She looked around and then wrote something on a piece of paper and stuck in it a bag with the liquid vitamin drops that I added to the formula. I was escorted out to the car and told that I should put the formula in the trunk and cover it up so no one could see it, that the store had been told to ration all formula to two cans at a time and that EBT and WIC card holders had first dibs. That when I got home I should wait until no one was looking to take the formula into the house and once I got it inside I should lock it up and not tell anyone how much I had.

The note from the pharmacist was instructions to go to a local clinic and to show them my letter from Feena’s doctor and to take all the formula they offered me and to not let my supply of the formula go down if I could help it. I drove away in total shock wondering if this was the old Russia or what.

I stopped at the gas station and got another shock. They were limiting fuel purchases to forty dollars per vehicle and at the price per gallon that wasn’t much. I went in the store to pay because the at-the-pump system seemed to be down. It wasn’t down, it was off. They were making everyone come in so that no one could cheat and get more gas than they were supposed to. The system was rigged to deny any credit card sales if someone had already used that card that day for gas anywhere in the country.

It was like the place was on simmer – there was even an armed security guard stationed by the register – and I was more than grateful to get Feena and I out of there. I was happier than ever that Cal had brought several drums out and put them in a partially-buried concrete shed that he’d built in the middle of a palmetto thicket. Two drums were filled with the special marine fuel that was now mandated by the state that he had to run in his boat and the others were regular vehicle fuel that he’d treated with something so it wouldn’t go all icky and useless. I thought it was a little strange at the time, but Cal told me to think of it like it was an investment. Buy low, sell high … he saves the extra cost per gallon by buying the fuel when it is less expensive.

I know it is his fuel, but he’s already told me if I need it use it, just replace it when I could, that it needed to be rotated occasionally anyway. I don’t think so, I’m no charity case. I’m going to start filling up with gas every day that I can and coming home and emptying the car tank into gas cans with one of those hose thingies that is in my roadside emergency kit in the car trunk. If I visit several gas stations in the same day and pay with cash I hope I’ll be able to build up a surplus.

With all of that running through my mind I decided to pull off into a city park, feed and change Feena and try and strategize. I had thought to grab a bite to eat for myself but a lot of the food trucks that I would have normally chosen from were nowhere to be seen. After getting a fix on the shortest route possible that maximized the number of stops I could make I headed back out.

First, I hit the big box club. There was rationing going on there too so while I was forced to pick up fewer of some items, I picked up more overall as I bought into the if-it-is-rationed-then-it-is-valuable mindset. Diapers. How can they possibly ration diapers? I am so screwed. I didn’t do any fresh or frozen stuff but I’m going to go back tomorrow and get a bunch of bags of frozen vegetables and dry them on Momma’s dehydrator that I got out of storage when Daniel and I got married.

I bought as much canned milk and dried milk as I had cash for. Thank goodness the checks had just hit at the bank and I withdrew enough to last me for the month … well, it is almost all gone already so it is back to the bank tomorrow. I picked up several large boxes of baby cereals. I’m not worried about baby food, not eating the store-bought stuff never hurt me any and Daddy always bragged that Momma saved the family a ton of money. Daddy was always bragging on Momma’s memory like that. I figured if it didn’t hurt me then it won’t hurt Feena to be fed the same way. At least I won’t have to worry about chemicals and preservatives and stuff in her food.

I picked up a lot of toilet paper, diaper wipes, and paper towels. When I got to the head of the check-out line a guy with a clip board came by and said he was taking a survey for the store and I’d get a free slice of pizza and a drink from the deli if I would participate. I was too hungry to turn it down but in hindsight I kinda wonder if I should have. He asked me about my shopping experience, would I shop there again, about the store’s cleanliness and if the staff had been helpful, and then out of the blue asked me if my baby enjoyed all the baby products I was buying.

Alarm bells went off and I gave what I hoped looked like a professional smile before telling him, “Are you kidding? This isn’t all for my kid. As part of the tuition the daycare is asking us to bring in supplies for the center. I’d never go through all of this stuff on my own, it isn’t even the brand I normally use.”

I’d heard a news story on that kind of thing just last week. It bothered me at the time, nearly as much as realizing I could lie like a trooper when I had to, lie well enough that the guy in front of me bought it hook, line, and sinker.

I got out of there as quick as I could – but not without my pizza and drink – and then stopped by the library to use the internet. I have a smart phone with internet access but the screen is so small that surfing the web is really hard. Printing stuff is impossible because the Bluetooth on my printer bit the dust so I have to make notes long hand … thank goodness I was smart enough to take short hand in high school even though everyone thinks it is an archaic and unnecessary skill these days. It sure has come in handy more than a few times.

I noticed there were a lot of blocked sites; especially news sites, blogs, and vlogs. It made surfing more time consuming than I had thought it would take and I was an hour longer at the library than I had meant to be. At least I didn’t have to compete with a lot of other people for computer station. It was the middle of the day and the kids weren’t out of school yet.

Before I left I hit the Friends of the Library bookstore. I couldn’t believe the books they were practically giving away. There were a lot of the junky books they had a million copies of like those bodice ripper romances but there were also a lot of Mr. Fix-It type volumes and gardening books. I also came away with some old recipe and craft books that reminded me of some of the books that used to sit on the shelf in Papa’s study. I don’t know what happened to all of those books, the only ones that didn’t disappear at the probate auction were Papa’s and Daddy’s leather-bound biblical commentaries and the family’s handwritten journals, but those had gotten put in a cedar chest and not on the shelves which is why they were probably missed.

I got one bag of paper backs for a dollar … the whole bag. Then I got two big paper grocery bags of hard back books for five dollars per bag. Cool beans. Not that it was easy getting it out to and then into my little car with Feena strapped to my chest like a time bomb. Not a single person even offered to open the door for me. People are getting really rude and surly. It’s depressing.

My last stop today was at the carneceria Papa always liked to shop at so I could place an order that I’ll pick up tomorrow. They still remember Papa and my parents which is nice but freaky. After being away for so long it is really strange to have someone talk about all the spots you had as a kid or some of the strange ways I used to have because I was raised in a house of older people. Daddy and Momma were in their forties when I was born … but they never called me a surprise, just a blessing and when my brother died while out fishing with some friends they lavished enough affection on me for two kids.

Between Daddy and Momma and Papa it was like having three parents. I remember Abuela, but only a little. She had a massive stroke when I was small and after only three months had another one that sent her to Heaven. My only other relatives are a great aunt and uncle that live in New Jersey. They’re … different. Papa and his brother got along much better so long as they kept hundreds of miles between them but after he died and I was alone they still offered to have me come live with them. The probate auction was their idea, I was too shook up at the time to understand all the consequences but now I look around the house and see empty spaces where different things had sat or hung for generations and know they’ll never come back. I still exchange cards with them at the holidays. They kind of know what happened with Daniel but not really, they’re old and frail and the few times I’ve talked to them on the phone in the last year they keep getting me mixed up with my mother and Feena with me. I suppose I don’t think of them as much as I should, they are family after all and had been willing to give me a home, but maybe they are happier in their slow dementia that holds the troubles of the real world at bay.

Wish I could experience that a little bit. Or maybe not. I have Feena to think about. I need to stay on my toes.

Daddy and Papa used to be completely religious about watching the news and even reading it on the computer. I think I had one of the few grandfathers that was more on the ball with technology than a lot of the fathers of my friends in school. After they died I just didn’t see the point in trying to do it … especially since none of the foster homes I was in exactly made that easy. They didn’t want us watching anything that upset us … but they didn’t seem to mind that the kids all played mindless and violent video games for hours on end. Hey, I’m just telling it like I experienced it; I didn’t say it made any sense.

Then when Daniel went overseas I watched and read the news until I was sick and Mr. and Mrs. Lowery suggested I unplug for a while or risk my health. When Daniel came home I was too … too messed up and then too busy trying to cope. Or that’s the excuse I used.

Tonight for the first time in a long time I watched the news. Broadcast news had a plastic feel to it, like it wasn’t real. I tried to watch cable news but it had that same weirdness to it. It was only when I got off the boob tube and on the net that things started feeling real. Too real. Very scary. I only vaguely understood some of what people were frantically blogging. I’ve got a lot to think about but I can’t do all the research I need to do by phone. Tomorrow I am going to take my laptop to the library and copy as much from the net as I can

I’ve already got a really long list of things that need my attention but for now Feena needs a last feeding and we both need some sleep. I know I’m going to need mine tomorrow.

---------------

 

[Kathy in FL]

21) Dear Diary (Part 1)

I hate lectures. My ears are still ringing with the one that I got from Cal. I don’t understand what the flaming big deal is. It isn’t my fault that he didn’t call last night to let me know he was coming. Nor is it my fault that cell phones were out most of the day. I swear he treats me like I am Feena’s age sometimes. If he wasn’t Daniel’s cousin and about the only family that I can beg a favor from every now and again when I need some muscles I wouldn’t put up with it.

Yesterday instead of going straight to the stores like I had planned I went blueberry picking at the u-pick farms. I got everything I could but I want to go back again tomorrow … assuming his royal crankiness doesn’t have any objections, and even if he does, so there. If he is so sure that everyone and their mother is out to rape and pillage then he can get his sorry butt out of bed and come with me and protect me … and carry the buckets.

I stopped at the gas station closest to the house right before first light. The sleepy clerk was more than happy to take the two tens and the four fives that I handed him as he would need them to make change as soon as rush hour started picking up. I learned the best advantage you can have while shopping is to keep plenty of small bills in your purse and to know where you can spend the larger bills without making the management squawk. And cashiers like it when you have correct change, they like it a lot.

With a cooler of water for me and bottles for Feena tucked in my trunk, I pulled into the u-pick farm that had the best reviews at the best prices when I asked around. I wasn’t the first one there that morning, but I was close. I was halfway finished filling my second bucket when I realized the old woman two rows over was Senora Escudero, the wife of my produce vendor friend.

She is this really tiny woman and if it wasn’t for the fact that her hair is as white as cotton and the deep crinkles around her eyes I’m sure most people would think she was a child. I can’t understand a word she says half the time. She was hurt in the Guatemalan Civil War as a young woman and it did something to her voice. She also speaks Spanish like a mestizo which means that it is almost a completely different language from what I grew up hearing in my home.

“Ola Senora Escudero!” I called. I couldn’t ignore her, that wouldn’t have been polite.

I had startled her and it wasn’t until she put the glasses on that hung from a chain around her neck that her face split in a huge grin. Her impossibly white and straight teeth reminded me of my own false ivories and I got a glimpse of what I would look like when I was older … like someone’s beagle had a pair of those chattering teeth in their mouth. I never got braces as a kid despite my teeth looking like an old picket fence and to look in the mirror and see straight teeth now is bizarre.

Today was a good day, she must have used plenty of glue on her dentures because I could understand almost everything that she said. And the way she talks with her hands is like watching a verbal ballet.

“Aaaahhhh, Aria y Josefina! ¿Dios nos ha dado una hermosa mañana de él no ha?”

“Si Senora. Es un hermoso día para recoger arándanos.”

“Si, si. Es una bendición en escritura. Mi marido estaba diciendo sólo que deseó que supo llegar a usted. Le gustaría entrar en el mercado tan pronto como sea posible. Él tiene algo de que quiere hablar con usted acerca. ¿Puede venir esta tarde?”

“Por supuesto, vengo esta tarde tan pronto como mis recados terminadas así puedo darle toda mi atención.”

“Buena. Buena. Tendremos té y marranitos.”

Basically she told me that Mr. Escudero wanted to see me and that I’d told her that I’d be by that afternoon and then she said she would have tea and gingerbread piglets for us. No, that last isn’t a mistranslation. Marranitos are these little gingerbread cakes that are shaped like pigs. I hadn’t had one since I was a little girl and when I made such a fuss over them the first time I saw them in their bakery case she always made sure there was at least one left over for me on Sunday afternoon.

When I left the u-pick farm I stopped at another gas station and got another forty dollars of gas and went home to unload … the fruit and the gas from my tank. I’m not sure what stunk worse, syphoning the fuel or Feena’s overdue diaper.

I replaced the empty space where the buckets of fruit had been with large empty coolers then closed my trunk. Then I refilled the water bottles and baby bottles and with grocery store ads in hand took off. On the way I stopped at a large Race Trak gas station with no lines, handed forty dollars cash to an irritable clerk and then skedaddled to pump and go.

Save A Lot, Aldi, Winn Dixie, and last but not least Super Walmart. I hate going to wally world; not because it is a bad place but because I always come out with at least one or two items that aren’t on the list I walk in with. Temptations lurk around every corner waiting to trip the unwary shopper. Those goofy yellow smiley faces might as well be vampires the way they try to drain my wallet. The problem is it is the only place I know where you can buy Seafoam fuel additive, Arm and Hammer washing soda, weed eater string, a good but inexpensive support bra, and frozen vegetables all under the same roof. Sadly, I also succumbed to a pair of $15 plastic garden clogs and a couple of $5 DVD movies that I’d never seen but always wanted to.

With one cooler maxed out with frozen veggies it was time to run to the carneceria to see if my meat order was ready. It was but it wound up being more expensive and larger than I had expected because to get the sales deals I wanted I had to buy another package that wasn’t on sale. It was no one’s fault but my own that I hadn’t read the fine print. I wasn’t going to make a fuss though because I saw they gave me a lot of boneless cuts and trimmed the fat really well. That meant I was paying for meat and not bone and gristle.

I nearly ran my bounty home, but it was too close to tea time so I threw some ice in both coolers, prayed over them that God would keep everything nicely chilled, and headed to my last stop.

I’m devastated. The Escuderos are closing their produce stand down. Not because they want to but because the US Department of Agriculture and IRS have teamed up and it is going to make it impossible for a lot of small vendors to continue doing business. In order to file federal taxes as an agricultural business you will now have to have some kind of quarterly inspection and federal license. If you don’t then the IRS won’t recognize you as a business so you’ll have to report your income but you can’t claim any business related expenses.

The Escuderos are old and they don’t feel like jumping through all of the hoops to get that federal license. They are leaving and going back to Guatemala and are going to give up their US citizenship. But before they do, they want to get rid of everything that the government might try and tax at the now standard 50% exit rate.

They didn’t say for certain – and I don’t blame them – but I think the Escuderos have an exit strategy and have moved their money out of the country already. Now they are just trying to get rid of what remains.

“I will miss watching little Josefina grow up but I am anxious to see some of my grandchildren that I have never met,” Mr. Escudero said with tears in his eyes. “But you have always been such a good girl. I wish for you to let us help you one last time. It is not much but we have already seen to our other friends and now we wish to see to you who have been like a granddaughter to us.”

I didn’t know what to say when I looked over and saw their nephew’s son Estuardo attaching a small trailer to the hitch on my car. Inside the trailer was cases of fresh fruits and vegetables but tied on the very top of the pile was a cage with six chickens and one rooster.

I didn’t even have time to object or bring the trailer back because they were leaving that evening to visit family in Miami before boarding another family member’s fishing boat that would transport all that were leaving the states along with their belongings. There were tears a plenty but then they insisted that I had to go and get everything put away before the heat got it worse than it already had. In truth I think it was just a polite way of saying, “Scoot, we need to finish packing.”

In deference to the additions to my zoo and the way my car was loaded down I had to drive slower. I had wanted to stop and get more gas but I didn’t dare try it with what I was pulling. Already I was getting some pretty funny looks.

It took me forever to get the car and trailer emptied. You’d think the chickens would have been my biggest problem but all I actually did was put them in the old dog run where Papa used to keep his hunting dogs before they all died of old age just like he had.

It took me forever to take the trailer off. I bet I was an hour trying to figure out why the thing wouldn’t come off until I realized you had to pull back the little locking mechanism before you started to turn the crank or it couldn’t release all the way and decouple from the ball of the hitch. It is easy once you know the trick, much harder to figure out the trick with no advice on how to do it.

Feena is usually happy to watch my goings on from her vantage in the sling but honest to Pete she would pick that day to decide she wasn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than the world bowing subserviently at her feet. By the time I was finally able to drag my sorry behind into the air conditioning I was ready to give Feena a close run for the title of loudest cry in the universe. Lucky for the universe a shower and dinner made us both feel better.

Feena babbled to her imaginary subjects from the relative safety of her playpen and I got started on putting everything away … or at least as away as it was going to get last night. I loaded the dehydrator with blueberries. Put some blueberries in plastic pint containers and squeezed them into the little bit of space in the stand-up freezer that wasn’t packed with the meat from the carneceria. Squeezed what I could into the frig and then just generally tried to clean things up so that it didn’t look like a Tienda had thrown up all over my kitchen.

Then I got a glass of ice and filled it full of the apple soda I should not have splurged on when I knew the sugar would have me climbing the walls after two sips, grabbed a tablet of paper and pencil and started walking around the house. While I put the toilet paper away in the linen closet I noted that if I wanted fresh and minty breath and to keep my fake ivories from looking like the shutters on a haunted house I would need to pick up some toothpaste and mouth wash poste haste.

On the paper I drew three vertical lines that made each sheet of paper into four columns. In the first column was the name of an item. The next column was how much I already had. The column after that was how much I thought I needed and the last column would be for tally marks to tell me how close I was to my goal. I’ll eventually put this list on the computer but right now it is simply too difficult to carry my laptop with me as I work.

Feminine hygiene products came after mouthwash. My period was still a little wonky but at twenty-two it’s not like I’m going to be getting rid of that particular little human female quirk any time soon. I was ready to scream if they were rationing feminine hygiene products the way they were diapers. Everywhere I looked there was something I needed, or something I could use more of if prices were going to continue to go up. Feena and I collapsed in our beds about one in the morning, not because I had finished my list making but because I had run out of paper and eraser head.

There was a jack hammer in my head this morning and the only thing that soothed it was a cup of coffee that practically had the consistency of tar it was so strong. I nearly started the day in tears when I realized there was only dust in the bottom of the Excedrin bottle. I added it to my list, fed Feena while I inhaled a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries, took one last, desperate and irritated look at the length of my list and locked the front door.

Gas. Feed store. Three yard-sales. Mercado. Picnic lunch at the park. JoAnn Fabrics. Library. Then a stop at a little Spanish market I had never seen before that had a small handwritten sign that it was going out of business. They weren’t sure what to make of me until I asked in Spanish if they carried linden leaves.

Did they carry linden leaves? You betcha. I also cleaned them out of every other package of spices and flavorings. A whole box of packages of various dried peppers from ancho to guajillo to puyas to red chilis. Cans of jalapenos. Sriracha, mojo, naranja agria, lemon juice. I have enough pine nuts and pumpkin seeds to send a troupe of starving squirrels into a blissful catatonic state. I have almost forty pounds of piloncillo cones that I can use in place of granulated sugar if I need to. I have two gallon-jugs of Honduran vanilla. Dried hibiscus flowers, annatto seed, capers, pink peppercorns, dried shrimp, tamarind pods. They didn’t have any coffee, but I got teas like cat’s claw, chamomile, linden leaves, mint, star anise, and yerba mate.

The list doesn’t stop there but my fingers do. I’m tired. And irritable. And I’d still like to march out to the travel trailer and give Cal a piece of my mind. It’s not like I don’t understand why he is so foul but having him foul at me … OK, now I’ll be honest though I could never say this to Cal’s face. It was like having Daniel shouting at me even though it wasn’t my fault he was hurting. I know if I tell him that Cal won’t know which way to look, maybe he’ll stop being my friend, and I don’t want that. Maybe this is my chance to pay him back for all the help he and Lily gave me when I needed them. I knew finding a way to pay him back in the same coin wouldn’t be easy … I just didn’t expect it to be this hard either.

After the little store I stopped at yet another gas station before going home. I was getting to know every gas station in this part of the county but what I found out during that last stop blew me away.

“What do you mean unless I buy twenty dollar’s worth of merchandise from the minute market you won’t sell me any gas?”

“Ya got wax in your ears Princess Wet Back? You don’t buy twenty bucks of stuff you don’t buy no gas. Now scram. You’re stinking up my store. Don’t you people ever use deodorant? You smell like the porch monkeys do.”

Ignoring the man’s obvious superior upbringing and intelligence I asked why.

“Oh, so you want some free education just like you get free everything else while we real Americans gotta work to pay for it.”

I was ready to blow my stack and if Feena hadn’t been with me I would likely have hurdled over the counter and done my best to gouge out the eyes of that misogynist bigot. I was still considering it when I heard a surprised yelp, “Aria?! Oh my God! It IS you! Mom told me that she thought she saw you … oh.” She finally got a good look at my face and at the smirk on the face of the man – using the term loosely of course – that stood behind the register. “Not again Uncle Darryl. Dad has told you and told you that you can’t talk like that around here.”

“Now listen here Little Britches, my sister’s husband might not be willing to state the truth but I’m not afraid to.”

“Uncle Darryl you haven’t got a clue. Aria and her family have been in the United States since it was nothing but a cluster of colonies. She’s got the proof too with old documents and stuff like that. For Pete sake her grandfather was an elder at our church until he died. You remember Papa Corces right? The man who cracked you on the butt with his cane when he caught you trying to peek into the girls’ bathroom when you were teenagers?” At the dawning look on his face she said, “Yeah, that Papa Corces. And when Dad finds out you are out … of … here. Thank God.”

Turning to me she pulled me over to the little deli area and asked, “Was he real nasty?”

Carefully I answered, “I don’t want to cause trouble in the family Dorrie.”

“I’ll take that as a definite yes.” She gave me a hug and Feena squawk drawing her attention. “Ooooo, isn’t she precious. Oh, can I hold her? Pleeeeease?”

You just don’t tell Dorrie no, if felt like pulling the wings off of a butterfly if you did. While she made a fuss over Feena we did a quick catch up. “We didn’t hear about the funeral until it was too late Aria or we would have come. Before that I tried to stop by the hospital a couple of times but you weren’t allowed to have visitors. I don’t suppose you remember getting my card?”

“I’m sorry Dorrie, I was pretty out of it for a long time. And when I was finally getting out it was so crazy that all I could do was box up what my in-laws hadn’t put in storage and then … you know what happened. I’ve been going ninety to nothing ever since trying to keep mine and Feena’s heads above water – dealing with the aftermath – and to be honest I … I haven’t been able to bring myself to go through everything yet.”

“Oh no kidding. Look, I didn’t mean to bring anything bad up, I just wanted you to know … you know?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You and your parents were always really nice to remember me even after Papa died.” Looking around I added, “But I don’t remember you all owning a gas station.”

“We don’t, my mom’s stepdad does, but Dad is managing it for him while he recovers from a stroke. It works out great because Dad lost his job at the phosphate plant and we all have moved into Gran’s great big house and share expenses. I’m a CNA and take care of Gerald … that’s Gran’s husband … and have a couple of other regular clients as well that need in home care. When I’m not doing that I’m here.”

“What happened to Todd?” I asked.

“Marybeth Weaver and a holy condom is what happened to Todd.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

21) Dear Diary (Part 2)

I sat there with my mouth hanging open because Todd was the preacher’s son then we both tried not to laugh and wound up giggling into napkins we have pressed into our mouths. The preacher’s son wearing a “Holy condom” … leave it to Dorrie.

“God it is so good to see you Aria. Come to church this Sunday, everyone will love to see you.”

“I … I’d love to Dorrie. I just don’t know if I’m ready for all the looks and questions … or everyone trying to be nice and not ask questions.”

“Honey, everybody already knows. It was plastered all over the TV for almost two weeks … twice.”

I winced. “Great.”

“Seriously, you should come.”

I’m considering it and told her so. “Good. Now what was it you came in here for anyway?”

“Gas.”

“Hmmm … ran into the new rule of you gotta buy twenty from the store to buy forty at the pump?”

“Catchy jingle.”

She snorted. “It’s the government price controls that went into effect at lunch. Didn’t you hear the president’s speech?”

I shook my head. “I had my head submerged in a couple of bargain barrels.”

She shrugged fatalistically. “We can’t sell the gas for what it is costing us. The only way to make it work is if people buy stuff from the store or deli to make up the difference. Dad only did it because the three other closest stations have started doing it. We can’t wait for the government to get their heads out of their butts, we have to do something now to help ourselves.” Thoughtfully she said, “Hey … you know Gerald owns the liquor store next door … I bet if you buy something there Dad will let it count toward the twenty bucks.”

“For you I’ll do it. For your uncle? Not if he was the last man on earth and the squirrels of doom were about to sacrifice me on the altar of old man gator.”

She laughed and said, “God do I know the feeling.”

I wound up spending way more than twenty bucks but liquor will do that to you every time … rum, vodka, brandy, whiskey, beer, and a few other things. The beer was for Cal and his buddies next time they came out and gave me a hand. The other stuff was for a special project that I have started to think about.

The look ol’ Darryl gave me when he saw the receipt from the liquor store was something to behold. But that look was nothing compared to the black cloud that was sitting on the porch stabbing viciously at what turned out to be his cell phone.

“Where the sam hill have you been all day?!”

Cal was in rare form and I was hot, tired, and completely overwrought at all the money I had spent … again … and no sooner had his growl stopped echoing around the yard than I burst into tears and told him to go take a flying leap off the end of the dock … preferably headfirst into the shallows.

Well that was a load of smelly socks to get settled down. I hadn’t meant to worry him, and he hadn’t meant to yell at me … at least not that loud. I felt bad when I heard how his last couple of days had gone and he felt bad when he heard about mine.

He helped me to unload the coolers in the trunk and we both carried everything else in and I nearly kicked Cal in the shins because he got so cross eyed he almost fell off the porch when he saw what all I had brought home and what all was packed into the house.

My sinuses were still stuffy from crying despite having blown them enough times to make things raw and my dignity came out sounding like I’d stuffed a cupful of peas up each nostril. “I don’t need any comments Cal. I didn’t break the bank and none of this will go to waste. I know what I’m doing.”

In a rather subdued voice he said, “Apparently more than I gave you credit for. At least you have plenty of room in the pantry for this stuff. There’s not a thing in there.”

“It’s not in there … it’s upstairs in the spare room. There’s something wrong with the floor in the pantry and I don’t want to risk making it worse by putting too much weight on it.”

“What?!” Out came the growl again. This time I just whapped him in the face accidentally on purpose with a bunch of fresh cilantro and he shut up pretty fast.

When he crawled out from under the house I handed him a beer I had stuck in the freezer when I realized he was going to be here a while. He took it from me and then looked at me and asked, “You drinking now?”

I rolled my eyes, “Oh please, you know me better than that. You and your buddies always have a few when you are cleaning the fish so I figured maybe you’d want one now.”

“Oh.” I felt like hitting him with the cilantro again but I didn’t want it bruise … the cilantro, not Cal.

I looked at the back porch and asked, “What’s the deal with the chest freezer?”

“I’m going to buy a cow.”

“I assume you mean a dead one?”

“Smart aleck. Yes, a dead one. Dead and butchered. It’s cheaper that way.”

“And what if the power goes out?”

“I hope it won’t before I can figure things out.”

Looking at him I said bashfully, “Jerky and canning.”

I didn’t have to explain what I meant which was a relief. “You can do that?”

I didn’t just say yes I showed him by taking him up to the spare room. “I figure that some quart jars and a little propane will be cheaper than a noisy generator and the fuel to keep it running.”

He looked at my canning jars and then around at the rest of the stuff in the bedroom and said, “What prompted you to do this?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“Promise.”

I sighed. “I went to the grocery store.” He parked one of his eyebrows up in the stubble on his head and I explained the progression of my anxiety. “And if it wasn’t for that pharmacist I might not have gotten …”

I opened the closet door and Cal completely spazzed. “My God Aria! Who knows about this? I can’t believe you just have it shoved in an unlocked closet. You …”

“Oh for … it’s formula not Fort freaking Knox!”

“What hole have you been living in girl?! We get reports every night of violent break ins where people are only looking for formula and diapers! Have … you … lost … your … mind?!”

“No! Have you lost yours?! What did you think Feena was eating? Steak and baked potato?!”

He opened his mouth and then had the gall to start laughing. “Lord … I’d forgotten that being around you and Daniel had been like being around Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. Who’s on first?”

He bent over laughing and I was sooooo tempted to kick him in the behind. He sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. “Seriously Aria … we need to get this stuff secured. Does anyone know about it?”

“Fine … but since you’re so smart you can help me figure out how. As for the other? Like who would know? It’s not like I have a sign stuck down by the river or taken an ad out in the Observer. I haven’t even had anyone but you and Mack and your friends over to the house.”

“No one? Not even a date?”

I shut down and walked out of the room. “Hey … Hey Aria!” he called after me. When he caught up he said, “That guy back there? He’s my idiot clone. I’m trying to get rid of him, but he keeps showing back up at the worst possible moments.”

As an apology it sucked but as an attempt to make me smile it wasn’t too bad. “Fine. But tell your … your idiot clone that that part of my life is solidly over with and if he brings it up again … I … I might ask him to leave.”

“I’ll … relay that message.” He looked at me and then asked, “We square?”

“Yeah,” I told him quietly. “Look, you want something to eat? I either cook now while Feena is down for a nap or it’s gonna take twice as long. How about yellow rice and black beans?”

A little hesitantly he asked, “Could you make one of them chorizo omelets like you made last time Josh and I were up here?”

“Sure, why not. Want biscuits?”

“Homemade?” he asked hopefully.

“Are there any other kind?” He grinned and then went to go take his stuff into the travel trailer.

Personnel is making him use his vacation days even though Lily changed plans on him. They were supposed to go away together, kind of a second honeymoon. Instead at the last minute he found out that she invited her parents to come down for two weeks and asked him to take a friend and go without her. Nice.

He was able to get a refund on his deposit for the cruise he had booked for them, but he didn’t tell her that. The money is now in his emergency fund in the cash vault he has buried under this house. He told me no money in the beginning but I don’t hold the change against him. Sorry for the bad pun.

I know he is still trying to work things out with Lily but it seems that she cooperates right up until she has to make good on her promises and then she always has some excuse or other. Trish says she’s pretty sure they aren’t sleeping in the same room anymore though she only knows because Amaris surprised Cal and Lily last time she was in town and just dropped by to introduce them to her fiancé. On the way to the bathroom Amaris noticed that Cal’s stuff was in the bedroom … and it wasn’t the master bedroom.

I’m trying not to take sides or be judgmental yet still be supportive. I needed that when things were going so wrong with Daniel. Cal and Lily gave me that. But they aren’t making it easy for me to give them the same thing. Geez Louise. I want to tell Lily she is a complete idiot, unappreciative of what she could lose. Being lonely sucks. I want to throw something at Cal for not standing up for himself more, like he’s so afraid of doing the wrong thing, or doing something that gets Lily’s rich parents involved, that they’re both going to live in limboland forever.

I’m one to talk though. I didn’t even know one of my best friends had stopped by when I was in the hospital because I am too much of a coward to go through the papers left over from that time in my life. How impossibly stupid is that?

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy! Hope you are on the mend.
Lili

 

[Hickory7]

Thank you. The house is quiet and I have stories to catch up on.

 

[Kathy in FL]

22) Dear Diary,​

It’s been kind of … uh … productive having Cal around for almost two weeks. But I swear he is bossier than Daddy and Papa combined. And at least those two men credited me with a modicum of common sense. Sometimes Cal acts like my brain is made of Swiss cheese.

It was nice to have someone around to talk about all this new stuff going on in my head but that said, it is also nice to have him out from under my feet now that he has gone home. Well sorta anyway.

If we’d been any more productive, I would have expired. I’ve canned, I’ve smoked, I’ve dried, I’ve planted, I’ve inventoried, I’ve printed, I’ve discussed and I’ve shopped … and shopped … and shopped … until I hope to never, ever, ever, ever shop again.

Fat chance of that happening if Cal has his way.

I never knew that Cal and his brothers were closet survivalists. All their wives are apparently totally on board too which is the complete opposite of how Lily is. His brothers, all but one more than ten years older than Cal, have all moved out west onto their own “spreads.” They’ve been at this for years and according to Cal could survive without contact with the outside world for three years or more.

“Sure they can.”

“No, seriously.”

“Have you seen this giant ‘bunker’ or whatever they call it?”

“Well … no. Besides, they each have their own.”

“Uh … huh.”

“But they’ve told me about it.”

“Right. Sent you pictures? Asked you to move out there to be with them?”

“Well … Lily and ... You know they are all older than me. I’m just kinda the odd man out.”

“Hmmm. They sound like wonderful big brothers. Did they lose you in the mall every chance they got too?”

“Uh … they … they never let me come with them.”

I rolled my eyes and groaned, “Oh brother. Cal, you’re a cop. A really, really, really good cop. You’ve got all the skills that would be perfect for a family of survivalists. But they’ve never asked you to come see their places?” I smacked him with a pillow. “They don’t want you to come out there because they know if you do, you’ll spot their lies.”

“They wouldn’t do that. They’re not like that at all.”

“And you call me naïve?! The whole world is like that. People build up their reputations, deserved or not, to feel better about themselves. They want people … need people … to look up to them, to believe that they are more than what they are. If your brothers really didn’t want you out there, they wouldn’t have told you a single thing. You said yourself that you don’t just advertise what you have because of all the data mining going on. The IRS alone has specifically targeted people claiming to be survivalists to make sure they are properly filing their gross and net worths at tax time. If they were so smart why would they tell their weakest link what they have?”

“Hey! I would never turn on my brothers!”

“Not you you oversized Boy Scout … Lily. You’ve said they’ve discussed things openly with her around, put it in writing in emails, even though they know she can’t stand them because of the way they’ve treated her since … well, for a long time now.”

He shook his head and complained, “You just don’t understand. They’re not like that. They wouldn’t have lied to me all these years.”

“So don’t look it as a definite lie, think of it as a possible exaggeration. Maybe they even keep things from each other and it’s kind of like a weird one-upmanship thing going on between brothers.”

He didn’t answer me. I’d made him halfway mad. But at least I’ve got him thinking.

Like he got me thinking. He went on the sheriff’s website and showed me calls for service and all the unsolved murders in this area of the county. He made me look up the type and number of incidences in the area and what addresses they came from. I had no idea that the house three doors into the ritzy community to the west that overlooks Cockroach Bay had a murder in it last week. Or that there is a habitual sex offender living four doors away from me as the crow flies.

I now have a concealed carry license. There is a handgun in my nightstand. A rifle in my bedroom closet. And bright and shiny new locks and bolts on all the doors and windows … including my bedroom door and closet door if I need a last bolt hole. There are also fold away fire ladders in all of the upstairs rooms including the attic. Smoke alarms, flashlights in several convenient locations, and the list goes on and on. Next up a heavy gate at the driveway entrance, perimeter alarms and surveillance cameras and a really crazy idea for a panic room under the house that doubles as reinforcing for some of the oldest floor joists. No, I’m not kidding.

The only stipulation that Cal has made is that I’m not allowed to tell anyone about any of it. Not Trish. Not Amaris. Not Mack. Not Dorrie who I’ve been getting reacquainted with as her mom and grandmother are as into canning and stuff like that as I am and own their own u-pick tomato field. Not Josh or any of his friends if they come out here fishing. Not anyone. Especially not Lily.

I’m not sure what to make of it. The more Cal and I discussed things the more into it he got. It was a little weird. A little scary. When it was just me, I could think small and I was comfortable with that. It kept the bad stuff at a distance. Cal doesn’t know how to think small. And his job doesn’t let him hide from the bad stuff that might happen.

And now he’s got me looking at the shadows in a different way.

 

[Kathy in FL]

23) Dear Diary,​

I got a call about ten o’clock and it just about scared the pee out of me because I was getting ready for bed. I have to be up early in the morning to go try and glean the last of the blueberries with Dorrie and her mom and aunt. I saw the caller ID on my cell phone and sighed.

“Yes. The doors are locked, bolted, and double checked. All of the windows too. The downstairs shutters are closed and locked. Just because you aren’t here to check behind me doesn’t mean I don’t do it.”

He snorted. “Not that. Have you been listening to the news?”

“No, I’ve been in the shower.”

He snorted again which was never a good sign. “A major riot is being reported in Atlanta. Somebody started a rumor that the state plans to cut its entitlement rolls by half and everyone is going to have to reapply and for every child over two, the benefits will go down.”

“Sounds reasonable in the current economic environment. The two-kid policy is also something that feminist group has been talking about, and you know their governor came out of that bunch. She already signed that bill making abortion free for low-income women, I guess they want to reinforce that. She and her wife are real hardcases. On the other hand, I don’t think Georgia will do it, but it does sound plausible.”

“Exactly. Sounds too plausible and it has scared a lot of people dependent on government handouts even though they are the ones that voted that woman in. The department thinks Tampa might pop if Atlanta really pops and everyone has been called in just in case. I know you are supposed to go pick berries tomorrow but if it does, I’m … I’m asking you nicely with sugar and a cherry on top to stay home. Please.”

Cal sounded really strange. “Oh. Well, yeah sure. If there is going to be rioting in the street I think I’ll just stay home and wash my socks. Maybe watch some paint dry if I get too bored. But maybe not, paint is a little bit much for me. Gotta watch the blood pressure and all that.”

That made him laugh and he sounded close to normal again though still serious. “You just won’t do girl. Look, regardless I might be a little hard to reach for the next few days. I’ll likely either be on patrol or sleeping at the substation. If you need anything though, you call and keep calling until you reach me. OK?”

“Sure. But Cal …?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d hate to lose my favorite cousin so you be careful.”

“Always am.”

---------------

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy!
Lili

 

[Sammy55]

Almost caught up with all the new chapters.............and waiting for more! LOL!

Thanks, Kathy!

 

[Kathy in FL]

24) Dear Diary,​

Real life sucks. Poor Cal.

There wasn’t a riot in Tampa. Rather than fighting in the streets people pulled their heads in like turtles and stayed quiet. The cops were out in force, the community cameras watched closely for any signs of incipient violence, but that’s it. The streets were eerily hushed from what the news reported.

Not so bad out here in Ruskin but it was still quieter than normal. The heat is as oppressive as the silence. Street violence and public drunkenness was down but domestic violence went up, way up, so the cops were still kept busy.

The blueberries are finished for the season and Dorrie’s family invited me to pick blackberries on their property. Hey, they got some free labor to help them out, but I came away with enough blackberries that the ones I found in the fence line around the house were all gravy.

A week after the Atlanta riot I got a strange call from Cal in the middle of the night. “Aria, don’t freak out, it’s just me.”

“Cal! I got your txts that let me know you were ok. Did you get mine letting …”

“Yeah, look. I’m coming down the drive. I need to borrow the trailer.”

“Sure of course, but Cal … it’s 2:30 in the morning. Is everything all right?”

“I’ll explain when it’s daylight. I’ll … I’ll be coming out later if that’s ok with you.”

Hearing the weirdness in his voice I again asked, “Cal … what’s wrong?”

“I … I can’t talk about it right now. Just do me a favor and stay in the house with the baby. Josh and a couple of other guys are with me. You might hear some noise, but everything is fine. Just … just go back to sleep.”

Yeah. I was gonna “just go back to sleep.”

I left the lights off, but I snuck downstairs and looked out the peep hole in the back-door shutters.

Two guys – one of them Josh and one I didn’t recognize – walked close enough to the porch that I could hear what they were saying if I cracked the door a little. “Dang Dude. Look at them hurricane shutters. She’s gotta be roasting in there with no air conditioning. What’s that woman afraid of? Bigfoot gonna snatch her and her kid and carry ’em off?”

“Knock it off Ray. She’s his cousin’s wife. She’s lucky she isn’t as crazy as her husband was after what she’s been through. If she wasn’t a little paranoid she wouldn’t be normal. And you do not want to say nothing in front of Cal. In the mood he is in …”

“Yeah … yeah I suppose so. Just seems strange for him to live out in that dinky little trailer when she’s got that big ol’ house with just her and her kid living in it.”

“That’s the way Cal wants it. He needs his space. And man you do not want to say what you are thinking.”

After a brief pause Ray said, “Got it.”

“Good. Let’s just get this unhitched and get that other trailer then get gone. Thank God I’m off tomorrow; I’m gonna sleep all day. It this wasn’t for Cal I’d be in bed right now.”

“You and me both man. I’ve got this new girl and she’s got these jugs that … mmmmm … and …” I didn’t hear the rest as they were walking back towards the travel trailer.

However, I can imagine what ol’ Ray was thinking, the guy obviously had a one-track mind. I hope he isn’t stupid enough to hint something like that to Cal. Bad enough that he barked at the kid at the grocery store when he asked if we needed any help out with our bags. No telling what he would do to Ray if he started talking nasty. I swear Cal is playing the big bad brother role a little too seriously on some days.

After they left, I tried to stay up but I was just too tired … and Ray was right about one thing, it was hot downstairs. The cheap window air conditioners that the property management team had installed while it was a rental all died. You can’t use the shutters anyway with the units in so I’ve opted to return to the way things were when I was growing up. No AC, just fans. It was better upstairs where the house captured the breeze off of the river and was about fifteen degrees cooler, twenty if I opened the window halfway and turned on the fan.

I was up early and had a pot of coffee on. I kept expecting Cal to text or call or drive up at any moment. I kept myself busy, trying not to wonder – not to worry – what had made him sound so strange the night before. It was nearly lunch time when my phone rang. “Aria, I’ve … I’ve got a situation up here at the end of the driveway. Can you come down here?’

I walked down and there was some big swanky car blocking my drive with some smirking little pretty boy in a suit but unprofessional hair length leaning against my gate post. I looked at Cal who looked sick … scary sick like someone had been rearranging his insides without medical authorization. The suit gave me a shark’s grin, but my blood was boiling and it was me that went for the kill.

“You’re trespassing whoever you are and if you don’t stop blocking my gate I’m gonna call the cops.”

Mr. My-Poop-Don’t-Stink says, “I’m in the right of way. It’s him that’s blocking the road.” He handed me his business card. I looked at it and then grinned nasty enough that he blinked.

“Wrong again idiot. You entered my private property when you turned off the main road back there at the bend. You notice the color of the street sign? You can read it says ‘private drive’? Well I’m Mrs. Private Drive. I own this entire road. I give a couple of homeowners along the river access to the back of their property just to be nice … but you I’m not feeling the need to be nice to. If you don’t carry your smarmy butt back the way you came you may not like the consequences. I own this road. I own the shoreline that surrounds my side of the twenty acres I live on. Consider yourself warned. I catch you or anyone sent by you trying to access my private property and it’s just going to mean another complaint against you to the Florida bar. And yes, I said another, as in you can already count on one. Any lawyer too dumb to read and to know the private property laws shouldn’t be practicing in this state.”

“My client has the right to …”

“Whoever your client is they can blow it out their backside. Get a court order. A proper one. Then have it properly served by the proper authorities. And you just got yourself a second complaint for being so stupid that a layman had to explain standard legal proceedings to you. Oh, in case you are still too dumb to read, I’ll point out that sign that is legally posted right there that warns you that everything on my private property is under surveillance. So smile for the birdie … your insolence is on tape and I’ll be uploading it to facebook and anyplace else I feel like before the day is much older.”

Giving me what passes for blank lawyer face he said, “I’m sorry there must have been some misunderstanding here. My apologies.”

“You know what you can do with your apologies, and your so-called misunderstandings can follow them. They must have picked you for your looks because they sure didn’t pick you for your brains. No one threatens my family Pretty Boy. No one. Ever.”

Just thinking about it again my brain feels like it is frying and I’m sick to my stomach. I’ve got to put this pen down or I’m gonna wind up stabbing it through the paper.

 

[Kathy in FL]

25) Dear Diary,​

I’m not any less angry than I was. If anything, I am more but I’m more in control of it now. It has also helped to do a few things about it. Cal wasn’t happy with what I did. He wasn’t angry either. I’m not sure he’s feeling anything right now.

I found Josh’s number in Cal’s cell phone and called him. “Josh? It’s Aria Lowery … Cal’s cousin.”

“Hey sure … uh … is Cal all right?”

“Yeah. Hey, did I wake you up?”

“No, it’s all right. I crashed here at the station because my shift went long. What’s up?”

“Cal told me what happened. He’s not in any kind of trouble is he?”

“Naw. The other guy is but his old man has some pull in IAB. They just think it’s better if Cal … you know … gets away from it all for a while. That’s the only reason he was reassigned, at least until it all blows over. Didn’t you just say that Cal explained things?”

“He hit the highlights but he’s kind of been vague on the details. He’s also been pretty closed off since a little run in yesterday with a weasel.”

“Yeah, I saw it on youtube. That was beautiful, pure genius.”

“Not really, they just made me mad. I owe Cal and Lily my life and to see things turn out like they have. It just set me off. Life’s hard enough as it is … you know?”

“Yeah that’s a roger on that. Look, Cal doesn’t have to report in until this Monday, sleep might do him some good and be what he needs.”

“That’s what he is doing now and thanks for letting me know about Monday, that’s what I was calling about in the first place.”

“That out of it is he?”

“Pretty much.”

“Ok. You call if you need anything. And tell Cal to call and keep me in the loop. Keep us all in the loop. We’ll grab some beers and go fishing as soon as he’s ready for company.”

“Sure, I’ll tell him.”

How is it possible to love someone, to have them disappoint you so badly, and yet continue to love them? I went through that with Daniel but at least there was a reason in there I could understand. This thing between Cal and Lily just makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Cal returned home unexpectedly and found … well, the less said about what he found the better. The who is the problem of the moment. Lily started an affair with Percival “butter won’t melt in my mouth” Perfect. That’s not the guy’s real name but close enough. Another cop. And not just any cop, but the guy that got promoted to detective ahead of Cal likely ‘cause his daddy had pull ‘cause what I’m hearing it sure wasn’t because of his test scores.

Of course none of that mattered when Cal walked in and caught them … uh … experiencing the moment. Cal grabbed the guy mid … uh … he threw him out of the house buck naked for all the neighbors to see and then erupted a verbal volcano all over Lily. He never laid a hand on her but he hadn’t even come close to winding down before the cops arrived on the scene. And she was giving as good as she got. What a mess.

And even though it was Cal that is the wounded party he’s the one that had to leave the house proving yet again that the world is nothing but a cesspool of sexist crap … on both sides of the gene pool. Cal refused to leave without his stuff and his buddies that had heard the call and arrived on the scene backed him up. Lily realized she was losing control of the situation and called her father and he sent a lawyer friend over but that was a flop. Once the guy saw the situation he backed off; he is a high-profile criminal attorney and didn’t want to mess up his relationship with the cops … or get his reputation sullied by something like a cheating wife. In the meantime, with one guy filming the entire process, Cal and his buddies started splitting everything in the house 50/50 with Cal taking anything and everything he’d inherited when his parents died which included some antiques and a few other things that Lily coveted. He also took the filing cabinet with all their legal documents, their home computer – she had her own laptop for work but didn’t always use it and Cal wants to have a computer friend of his go over the hard drive for incriminating files – and he emptied their checking and savings accounts of half their contents and quickly took the time to stop his automatic deposits from going into their shared account since Lily makes as much as he does as a graphic designer. He also got her name removed as beneficiary off his 401K and a few other financial kind of things which was why it was lunch time before he showed up.

Cal was riding on emotional jet fumes. Now he’s all but crashed and burned. He’s asleep on the sofa in the living room in the same position he was in when he shut his eyes about six hours ago.

I know exactly what they are going to try and say, what they are going to infer. I’ve already gone through that once when Daniel had his parents doubting that Feena was his. Lily is not going to like how I push back this time if she takes it further than I’m willing to tolerate.
------------

 

[Jeepcats27]

Really like how Aria takes care of business!

 

[Sammy55]

Go, Aria!!

Great, Kathy!!

 

[sssarawolf]

Thank you

 

[nancy98]

Yeaaa! Great story. Thanks.

 

[Kathy in FL]

26) Dear Diary,​

I’m not proud of myself. I didn’t do anything wrong and they started it but that doesn’t mean that how I acted is anything to applaud. But I think they are finally getting the point. We’ll see. I learned while dealing with Daniel to always hold back a little something just in case the promised improvements or resolutions never appear.

“Excuse me Deputy, does that writ include my private residence?”

“No ma’am, it does not.”

“Then please tell that lawyer and his client’s father that their demands don’t mean a crock of burnt beans. They got the writ to look inside the travel trailer that is the personal property and solely in the name of my cousin Cal Lowery. They’ve looked inside. Now it’s time for them to go.”

“Now just one minute here …” Lily’s father blustered. “I know my daughter’s belongings are here somewhere. We have evidence that they were brought here but none showing they were removed.”

The lawyer saw me grin and tried to shut the man up. Too late. “Ah, so the paparazzi wannabe was sent by you? Good, I’ll file another complaint. After all your pet lawyer was warned that he was trespassing on private property last time. He was also warned my land is under surveillance by security cameras. I have pictures that clearly show he disregarded the chain across the road as well as the no trespassing signs and private property signs. I’ll also charge invasion of privacy and endangerment of an infant since when I approached this man he jumped in his car and peeled out so fast he threw rocks back in my direction and I was carrying my baby daughter at the time … and I have pictures of that as well.”

I could almost hear both men swallow. Then I put all politeness aside. “You are finished on my property. I don’t give a rat’s behind what you demand. You’ve been given a copy of the video and a detailed inventory of what was removed. The details include the origin of each item as well and who paid for them as well as copies of any pertinent receipts. My cousin is a … detail-oriented person and Lily knows that for a fact having been married to him for ten years. I hate to remind you of your business but here it is … Florida is a no-fault divorce state; all it takes is one person declaring the marriage irretrievably broken. Lily’s multiple affairs, dating back to the beginning of the marriage, is well within that definition. And another interesting thing I’ve found out … Florida isn’t a community property state but a marital property state and strangely enough inherited property, gifts, and real estate, so long as it isn’t co-mingled with marital property after the marriage, isn’t considered marital property. Cal always kept a separate insurance rider on the items he had inherited from his parents and that rider was in his name alone. Ah, you didn’t realize that Mr. Lawyer? How remiss of your client and her father to not inform you of that fact. Now, unless you want things to really get nasty I suggest you back off.”

Lily’s father hissed like a snake. “Listen you little …”

“No, no, no. None of that language now. And you might want to calm down, you look like you are on the road to a stroke. Like I said … nasty.” Turning to the lawyer and smiling once again I said, “Allow me to give you a hint what I mean by nasty. Computer files, date and time stamps. Incriminating evidence about fidelity and medical procedures like … oh say … tubal ligation using her husband’s insurance but not informing him that the procedure had been done.”

“That could be planted evidence Mrs. Lowrey.”

“Are you really that naïve? Don’t you remember me saying date and time stamped? Looks like I’m going to have to be even more specific. A two-week period that was supposed to be a second honeymoon only your client cancelled on her husband on the day before they were supposed to sail because she preferred staying and inviting her parents down for two weeks so that her father could attend something at the convention center? When her husband fussed that they’d probably lose the deposit money she cruelly suggested he take someone else … truly cruel and inhumane considering it was only a short time after she had been caught in an affair of unknown duration with an old high school flame for which they were in counseling to deal with?”

“He got that money back, we’ve got the documentation to prove it. He’ll need to return it to their joint account.”

“Ah but you forget, Lily had asked her husband not to return until her parents had left since they didn’t get along. We have captured facebook, twitter, and text entries to back that up despite the fact that you’ve tried to scrub the postings out. I congratulate you, you are rather fast.” Sotto voice I mumbled, “Bet your wife loves that.”

Before he could give voice to his offended male warble I reminded him, “Cal needed money to live on after his wife cruelly restricted him from their shared home. That money would not have kept him in a motel for two weeks.”

“He wasn’t in a motel Mrs. Lowery, he was here.”

I nodded, “Agreed. Staying in his travel trailer that required fuel to operate the generator. He also had to have fuel for his personal vehicle, food, and I don’t see anyone begrudging him renewing his fishing and boating license during that time so that he could entertain himself while his wife went shopping at the high-end stores at International Plaza and attended several Gala events downtown.”

The Deputy said, “Folks this is really entertaining but it is obvious the writ has been served and executed. Anything else can be hashed out in court.”

I smiled. “Court? It doesn’t have to go that far unless Lily insists. Mediation will do admirably. It is apparent she has no interest in continuing the marriage based on her past behavior. We’ll just bring all of our documentation and the depositions by the counselors and ... Oh wait … don’t you want to hear …?”

Pretty Boy and Lily’s father were ignoring me, and the deputy was trying not to grin. He looked at me and said quietly, “Tell Cal I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure he knows. You have a job to do just like he does. You don’t get to pick and choose your assignments.”

After everyone left, I walked into the house to find Cal on the phone. He was pale and surprised but still scowling. I stood behind him listening. “No Lily, I’m … I’m not coming home. You don’t want a marriage, not a real one built on trust and mutual respect. I never blamed you for not wanting children so don’t try and hold that over my head. I just can’t take never knowing if I’m going to come home to find some man sleeping in the bed that was supposed to only be shared by the two of us. I won’t take it anymore, you’ve burnt that bridge for the last time; I’m not rebuilding it again.”

I could hear some jibber jabber on the other end.

“If you want to know what is up with Aria call and ask her yourself. No, she’s not being mean. As a matter of fact she was the only one that supported us working things out and staying together.”

More jibber jabber.

“No, I really haven’t talked to her about what has been going on. It’s been our problem, she’s had enough of her own to come to terms with.”

Jibber Jabber Squawk

“Of course she knows now. It’s no secret. She probably heard some of it from Trish and Amaris. I think she even called Josh when I was so out of it in the beginning, that’s what he said anyway. Wouldn’t you want another witness if you were trying to decide what to believe and what not to believe?”

Squawk Squawk Jibber

“You’re the one that told her you didn’t want to see her gain … and called Feena a spawn for God’s sake. Even then she didn’t turn on you, you know how she is about family. I mean she stuck by Daniel until the very end.”

Squawk Jabber Squawk.

“I didn’t say you were like Daniel. Look if you are going to act like this I’m going to hang up.”

Jabber Jabber Jibber

“Yes I’ve got a lawyer.”

Jibber Jabber

“She will introduce herself after she finishes going over all of our financial papers.”

Squawk Squawk Squawk Squawk

“What did you think was going to happen? You sent your dad and one of his pet monkeys after me. Of course I got my own lawyer and it is standard procedure to go over all financial records to start sorting things out. If we are going to do this, we’re going to do it the right way so neither of us can complain we didn’t know what the outcome was going to be.”

I tapped Cal on the shoulder making him jump. I carefully took the cellphone out of his hand while Lily’s voice blew through the speaker comparing Cal to things that were anatomically impossible in nature.

“Lily? Aria here. I don’t think it is healthy for you and Cal to speak to one another directly right now. You appear to be emotionally overwrought now that the consequences of your actions are setting in and obviously aren’t thinking about the ramifications of your words. I already spoke to your lawyer and put it on the table. Items that are non-marital property will be retained by the parties that they belong to … you’ll keep your grandmother’s jewelry and Cal retains ownership of his grandmother’s antique brooch collection that was kept in your safety deposit box.” I held the phone away from my ear from a moment before saying, “Don’t shout. It won’t change a thing and it makes you sound vulgar. Yes Cal emptied his belongings out of the box, he isn’t stupid and is well aware of how lawyers work. Now as I was saying, Cal retains the items that were inherited specifically in his name and insured in his personal name and you can keep the few items that came to you by direct inheritance. He has decided, at this time, to not make any claims against the gifts that you received as a couple from your marriage like the car you drive and the china and crystal that you got as wedding presents. Cal will keep his truck and the other pieces of marital property that has already been removed from the home.”

“What about all my pain and suffering?! Huh?! I will definitely be getting alimony.”

“Fuhgetaboutit Lily.” I had always wanted to say that. “You have no children together. You make at least as much as Cal does and a little more when you calculate in commissions. You are the one that had the multiple affairs and if you want to push this I’ll suggest to Cal’s lawyer that your adultery may be grounds to have you paying Cal alimony.”

Her screech nearly broke my ear drum. When I could hear again it was the dulcet tones of Pretty Boy. “Poor Lily is completely overcome with emotions.”

“I just bet she is.”

“I’m sure we can avoid all sorts of unpleasantness if we put our minds to smoothing the way between Lily and Cal.”

“I’m sure we can too Blondie, by the way does Fabio do your hair?” When he was done sounding like he’d coughed up a hairball I said, “Look, have her sign what Cal’s lawyer sends over. If Lily won’t do it, tell her to get another lawyer because she won’t get a better deal. I wasn’t kidding about incriminating evidence. Her father might want to consider keeping a low profile too. Some of these files are … uh … let’s call them interesting and leave it at that. The cop friend of Cal’s that is doing the forensic investigation on the hard drive is almost to the point where he’s going to be ethically required to turn them over to the DA’s office and you know what a mess that could turn into. Face it, Lily had her chance and she blew it. And I wasn’t kidding about the alimony either and you know these days an adulterous spouse can make the whole divorce proceedings get very, very sticky. Pictures, depositions, no telling what would come out in the wash.”

“Hmmm. I’ll … relay … your talking points to my client.”

“Do that Fab Jr. Just make sure she understands that this stuff getting out isn’t going to do her career or her father’s reputation as a businessman any good. Yours either for that matter.”

I clicked end and then handed it back to Cal who just stood there looking at me. Finally he said, “Forensic investigation of the hard drive? Incriminating evidence?”

I shrugged. “Papa always said that words have power; that it isn’t what you know so much as what they think you know.”

“Aria that’s a pretty big, dang bluff girl.”

“Yeah, maybe … but a reasonable one. Her father made his money in construction. Big construction. I looked it up. There’s been a few problems here and there with the buildings and things his name has been attached to. Some complaints in the public database for Florida licensed companies. A couple of news articles in local papers. Nothing spectacular. But where there is smoke, maybe there is fire. Maybe Lily knows about it, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe her father isn’t sure either and can’t remember if he or his wife used your computer or not the various times they’ve stayed at the house.”

Cal snapped, “Who do you think you are?! Perry Mason? This isn’t a game Aria, this is my life.”

“No kidding,” I said, trying to not snap back. “And you’ve put up with her crap absolutely long enough. Isn’t that what you said to me when I’d feel guilty over having to make hard decisions about Daniel? I never got a chance to resolve anything with him. If you think his death changed that think again. I don’t want that for you Cal … I don’t even want it for Lily. Daddy and Papa always said …”

Cal covered his face with his hands and flopped down on the sofa. “Oh here we go. What bit of Biblical wisdom did they impart over this situation?”

I hit him with one of the small fuzzy sofa pillows leaving fur balls stuck in the bristles of his crew cut. “They said a pig wearing lipstick is still just a pig.”

He gave me a surprised look. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’ve done everything you can to keep this marriage going. Ten years Cal … for ten years and most of those willingly in and out of couples counseling committing to try and fix what’s been wrong. At least willing and committed on your part. You forgave her at least two other times for infidelity that I know of. You’ve worked hard and long at the marriage. No, you weren’t perfect, but you never stopped trying. She did. Maybe it wasn’t always like this, but it is now. She’s cruel. She’s torn your heart and mind up. I more than most know that at some point you have to stop beating on yourself because the other person won’t or can’t be the person they need to be.”

“Yeah but you didn’t turn your back on Daniel. You still wear your wedding ring. You kept the name Lowery instead of going back to Corces. You still won’t stand for people to say bad things about him.”

“That’s because Daniel was sick … literally sick … holes in his brain sick. I made a vow … in sickness and in health. And despite that I didn’t use it as an excuse to go sneaking around committing adultery. There was no get out of jail free card for me. My wedding vows meant that I promised if Daniel couldn’t make decisions for himself that I’d do it and do my best to care for him no matter what since he was mentally unfit to do it for himself. And just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I’m not responsible to his memory … but not for his sake any longer but for Feena’s. She’s going to need to figuratively meet her father one day … not just the sick man he turned into but the boy he used to be. She needs to understand consequences and that we have free will up to the point we destroy ourselves. You don’t have to go through that. Lily isn’t sick.”

“But …”

“No buts Cal. I’m how much younger than you? But on this it feels like I’m way older. You’re a … God help you … you’re a romantic. I had the romance beat out of me. Literally. I love you and Lily; you’re family. I saw something in your marriage that I wanted but knew I’d never have after a point. You two were my friends, my confidants, you literally saved my life, and Feena’s too. I see what you see and hurt with you … you could have made it, you could have had forever, the good kind. But like you and she kept telling me back then, it takes two. You gave it your all, for whatever reason Lily chose not to. The more often she stopped giving the less she was inclined to start it back up. Lily abandoned you and turned her back on her vows and she doesn’t have a single excuse for it … not the first time, not the second, not the third. She …”

“All right already. I get it. I … I get it.” He sighed and slowly rubbed the bristle on top of his head. “How big a mess did they make of the trailer?”

“You don’t want to know. Just go upstairs and crash tonight. You said yourself you start swings tomorrow.”

He opened his mouth to say something then just turned and climbed slowly up the stairs looking far older than his thirty-one years.

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[Kathy in FL]

27) Dear Diary,​

Cal is back in the travel trailer. He needs his space and I do too. His brooding intensity can be hard to take sometimes. Lily signed the divorce papers so fast Cal’s lawyer couldn’t believe it. And on top of that they’re paying Cal’s legal fees as long as he promises not to fight when it gets finalized. Fat chance of that at this point, especially since Trish let it slip that she’s seen Lily out with Percival Perfect a couple of times in public. It will be six months before the divorce is granted, even uncontested, because the law in Florida is funny that way to give both parties a chance to think things over.

When Cal isn’t at work he is doing projects around here. He still seems to be insistent that we continue with our plans as if nothing has happened to interrupt them. If I try and bring it up, ask him to take some time, he just looks at me and says, “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

As for me, Dorrie’s renewed friendship has opened some doors. The new federal regulations have cut into all the produce stands and u-pick farms. Most say they won’t replant, they’ll let their fields go fallow if the government is going to be like that. Most people don’t realize how bad it is going to get next year. But Dorrie’s family does and I do. Now as soon as they hear of a field opening we are first in line. Here in June I’m picking pole beans and bush beans and lots of tropical fruit both in our yard and anywhere I hear someone has a tree or bush they want cleaned off to make the inspectors go away.

I also have an advantage over Dorrie who is pale and blonde … I can pass amongst the migrant workers and hear stories of places that might have work to offer. I don’t do it for pay but for the food that some workers are willing to take as part of their wage … the seconds like torn beans, bruised melons, fruit so ugly or misshapen it will never make it to market. I also hear when shipments are due to the few remaining produce stations that sell to the restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels in Tampa.

It costs money to travel to Tampa, but I usually make a day of it and stop in to see Trish and Mack. But that’s over with as of this week. Mack is getting Trish out of Tampa – a place where serious crime is on the rise – and going to work in his father’s law firm up in Baker County. It also puts them closer to Mack’s kids from his first marriage and the two boys really need their father right now. Trish’s only regret is leaving the paid off house but they’ve placed it with a property management company and it will be here if they change their mind at some point in the future.

Today I came back from Tampa with a carload of melons and corn and squash. Paying for everything in cash keeps the questions to a minimum. Speaking Spanish doesn’t hurt either. People seem to assume I’m a maid or cook for a wealthy family. I let ‘em think what they want. I’m not intentionally mysterious but they’ve learned that I won’t answer pointed questions.

I stopped by the cemetery again. I don’t do it often, in fact rarely, but I’d heard there’d been some desecrations and I had to know if Daniel and his parents had been affected. No thank goodness but there was destruction all around their plots as people ripped out any copper or other metal for recycling. I’m glad now that Trish convinced us all just to go with small stones that lay flat with the ground. I think the modest, unassuming memorials are invisible to the sacrilegious thieves.

Trish told me that Edgewater has been hit three times by metal and Freon thieves. This last time the kitchen was almost completely destroyed before the thieves were caught and stopped. It was an inside job. Visiting youth act like they’ve been invited, are given warm welcomes, then get to know the church’s lay out from the inside. They also learn what security features are there and what the fastest way is out of the building. It’s shameful.

I stopped by the church office but Pastor was in a meeting with some insurance adjustors so I just left him a message and told him I’d be praying for him. I’ve been to church a few times with Dorrie but it was just as hard as I feared it would be to find my footing amongst all the old acquaintances.

I have a line on a shipment of unshelled, raw peanuts that is supposed to be coming into town day after tomorrow. That will give me a day to take care of what is down in the kitchen now. That’s not enough time to get it all finished but it will at least get me started.

I always feel like I’m behind. I’m tired of being behind all the time. But then I look at Cal when he is staring at the river and it’s like he can see something at the edge of the horizon that I can’t see yet. It’s a very spooky feeling and one that makes me try to go a little faster.

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