retelling pt 2
Pt 2
Claudia’s daughter was also given over to the care of Elsinore and Alison, already well into their spinsterhood. Michelle was everything that Nicholas was not; darling, loving, and greatly concerned with the well-being of others. She wept over the carcass of the bird her housecat proudly brought her. She cried out when the mousetraps snapped in the night. She was near inconsolable after the Hawkins boy ran over the rabbit nest with the lawnmower by accident. Every night, Michelle prayed to God for his smallest creatures.
Too old to homeschool, Elsinore an Alison sent Michelle to join the throng of children from Grizzly Peak’s recent economic boom. She turned her love of animals to study and care and soon had dreams of being a veterinarian. But the only equity the Lusk family has was the house and the property. A mortgage and a few scholarships can go a long way towards a college education. However, Dr. Michelle Lusk never came about due to one Mr. Jeremy Cole, Jr.
Jeremy was flunking out of high school and his father paid Michelle to tutor him. Eventually he took more of a shine to her curves than her lessons and went about winning her heart. He capitalized on her love of animals and took her everywhere she could pine of the cute ‘n cuddlies. The wildlife preserve, the meager zoo up in Parris Hill, and eventually out to the old barn on her property where, in the throes of passion over an injured goat, Jeremy plied his troth and got farther than the third base he was prepared for.
Michelle and Jeremy were married just after she graduated, (he dropped out to begin working at the lumber mill,) her gown barely covering the swell of her pregnancy. She named her daughter after her great aunt Elsinore, in the hopes of winning back some affection. It didn’t work and neither aunt was welcoming of Jeremy into their home. But they doted in little Elsie while Michelle went to the local community college for her teaching certificate.
I was always encouraged to be studious, and then as my own body began to shape the importance of chastity was added. My mother instilled in me the same love of creation, the same understanding of art and science and language. Even as my aunts withered and died, I had this perfect little sphere of existence with mom, a secret language of education that no one but the two of us understood.
I could spin you a tale about a hard-working, blue-collar father who slaved ten and twelve-hour shifts to pay the mortgage so his schoolteacher wife and daughter could live happily together with him, what little he saw of them, positioning his baby girl for a bright future. I could also tell you about the resentful, unintelligent laborer with a wife who outgrew him when she went to college and a daughter too smart for her own good. I could tell you about a backwater town with too many secrets and an unreasoning interest in keeping them. But instead, I’ll tell you that I loved my father and my mother more than anything in this world, and they loved me as much as they could.
I was fourteen when mom had her accident and I learned how much she and my father really loved each other. She never liked driving at night, but she was meeting one of her professors from college after a late class. The sheriff called me at the house and then got dad at the mill. My world was grey around the edges and cracked from top to bottom when they told me mom was dead. I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that, and looking back too long suffuses me with the blackened shock of a world all edges and nightmare. I can only imagine what my father was going through.
Later, the details filtered through. The other victim of the wreck was her friend from the college, riding shotgun, with a blood-alcohol rating to choke a horse. Mom’s toxicology came back over the legal limit. And her panties were in his pocket. It was like some Kennedy scandal had smeared itself all over our town. She was labeled a scarlet woman posthumously and while the funeral had a decent turnout, and the wake stocked with more casseroles than a church pot-luck, very few people remained to comfort the widower and daughter.
I can’t say either of us took it well, or did well by each other in our mourning. My father spent a lot of time at the bars after his long shifts, picking up overtime whenever he could get it. I didn’t see much of him for two years after the accident. We were polite strangers after a while, neither too eager to start up the shouting matches or deal with the crying jags. I knew he was seeing other women, but he made a point to never bring any home.
My uncle David showed up the spring of my sophomore year after a stint in Johnstown for aggravated assault. Desperate for comfort and struggling to keep up the mortgage payments, my father welcomed him in. I did, too, hoping for someone else to take the burden of keeping the home so I could focus on my studies. In a year I could compete for scholarships and I had tested high in my PSAT. But within the year, my hopes of attending college had gone up in smoke.
Claudia’s daughter was also given over to the care of Elsinore and Alison, already well into their spinsterhood. Michelle was everything that Nicholas was not; darling, loving, and greatly concerned with the well-being of others. She wept over the carcass of the bird her housecat proudly brought her. She cried out when the mousetraps snapped in the night. She was near inconsolable after the Hawkins boy ran over the rabbit nest with the lawnmower by accident. Every night, Michelle prayed to God for his smallest creatures.
Too old to homeschool, Elsinore an Alison sent Michelle to join the throng of children from Grizzly Peak’s recent economic boom. She turned her love of animals to study and care and soon had dreams of being a veterinarian. But the only equity the Lusk family has was the house and the property. A mortgage and a few scholarships can go a long way towards a college education. However, Dr. Michelle Lusk never came about due to one Mr. Jeremy Cole, Jr.
Jeremy was flunking out of high school and his father paid Michelle to tutor him. Eventually he took more of a shine to her curves than her lessons and went about winning her heart. He capitalized on her love of animals and took her everywhere she could pine of the cute ‘n cuddlies. The wildlife preserve, the meager zoo up in Parris Hill, and eventually out to the old barn on her property where, in the throes of passion over an injured goat, Jeremy plied his troth and got farther than the third base he was prepared for.
Michelle and Jeremy were married just after she graduated, (he dropped out to begin working at the lumber mill,) her gown barely covering the swell of her pregnancy. She named her daughter after her great aunt Elsinore, in the hopes of winning back some affection. It didn’t work and neither aunt was welcoming of Jeremy into their home. But they doted in little Elsie while Michelle went to the local community college for her teaching certificate.
I was always encouraged to be studious, and then as my own body began to shape the importance of chastity was added. My mother instilled in me the same love of creation, the same understanding of art and science and language. Even as my aunts withered and died, I had this perfect little sphere of existence with mom, a secret language of education that no one but the two of us understood.
I could spin you a tale about a hard-working, blue-collar father who slaved ten and twelve-hour shifts to pay the mortgage so his schoolteacher wife and daughter could live happily together with him, what little he saw of them, positioning his baby girl for a bright future. I could also tell you about the resentful, unintelligent laborer with a wife who outgrew him when she went to college and a daughter too smart for her own good. I could tell you about a backwater town with too many secrets and an unreasoning interest in keeping them. But instead, I’ll tell you that I loved my father and my mother more than anything in this world, and they loved me as much as they could.
I was fourteen when mom had her accident and I learned how much she and my father really loved each other. She never liked driving at night, but she was meeting one of her professors from college after a late class. The sheriff called me at the house and then got dad at the mill. My world was grey around the edges and cracked from top to bottom when they told me mom was dead. I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that, and looking back too long suffuses me with the blackened shock of a world all edges and nightmare. I can only imagine what my father was going through.
Later, the details filtered through. The other victim of the wreck was her friend from the college, riding shotgun, with a blood-alcohol rating to choke a horse. Mom’s toxicology came back over the legal limit. And her panties were in his pocket. It was like some Kennedy scandal had smeared itself all over our town. She was labeled a scarlet woman posthumously and while the funeral had a decent turnout, and the wake stocked with more casseroles than a church pot-luck, very few people remained to comfort the widower and daughter.
I can’t say either of us took it well, or did well by each other in our mourning. My father spent a lot of time at the bars after his long shifts, picking up overtime whenever he could get it. I didn’t see much of him for two years after the accident. We were polite strangers after a while, neither too eager to start up the shouting matches or deal with the crying jags. I knew he was seeing other women, but he made a point to never bring any home.
My uncle David showed up the spring of my sophomore year after a stint in Johnstown for aggravated assault. Desperate for comfort and struggling to keep up the mortgage payments, my father welcomed him in. I did, too, hoping for someone else to take the burden of keeping the home so I could focus on my studies. In a year I could compete for scholarships and I had tested high in my PSAT. But within the year, my hopes of attending college had gone up in smoke.