So after they fell asleep that night, I left. I collapsed to my knees twice as I walked away from my childhood bedroom and with my tear-streaked hand, stifled the sound of my hysterics down that hall of once-perfect memories.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lake
Trish didn’t look the way she did in her pictures. Her brown hair was dry and reddish now. She’d done the dye job herself and I couldn’t unsee it after Hunt whispered in my ear one morning that it looked like bacon. She was only forty-one but her skin hung loose off her bones and her eyes sagged, like the bags under it were adamantly pulling them down. The fact that you could still tell that she was once completely stunning just made her appearance all the more startling. But over time, I got used to her. And sometimes, depending on how she acted that day, I thought she looked pretty. Or maybe I just really wanted to think she looked pretty.
I quickly started to crave the days that she’d plop onto where I slept on the couch and ask me to tell her a story from New York. Her laugh was grating on my ears but I still wanted it because it was better than what she was like most of the time. All she ever talked about was money. The first thing she asked me when she first saw me was how much the cab was from the airport. She couldn’t believe I took a cab. She wanted to know how much money I even carried around in my wallet on a day-to-day basis and when I wouldn’t answer right away, she asked if she’d just been offensive, and if I found her offensive.
That first day together, she took a bit of time to admire my hair and my clothes and the shiny ballerina flats on my feet but after that, it was nonstop interrogation. She asked if I had money for her and I said I had Caroline’s necklaces and rings, which pissed her off because she said I’d have probably gotten more money hocking it in New York than where we were and we’d just waste gas money on driving to one of the bigger cities to pawn the jewelry, so it wouldn’t be as good a profit. “You screwed up on that one, baby girl,” she said, trying to sound like she was joking but I knew that she wasn’t.
She never stopped talking. She talked more than Hunt and Dean combined. Then again, Hunt didn’t talk much and Dean rarely ever said a word.
The first time I met him, my muscles were clenched so tight that it felt like I was going to give myself a six-pack. He was the manager of the park and he sometimes slept in his office next to the moldy-looking community center where the little kids played. Sometimes he didn’t come out of it for days. That was what happened when I first arrived. I was grateful that I didn’t see him for the first few days at Sunstone but at the same time, his absence only heightened my stress and fear for the moment we actually met.
His appearance alone had me trembling when I first laid eyes on him. I was sitting on the bright red stool in the kitchen. It had a ripped cushion that scratched my thighs. Hunt had apparently stolen it from a diner. I was eating a waffle that was still half frozen at the center and hurting my teeth when Dean walked in. He was a tall, gruff-looking man in his mid to late-forties. Most of his face was covered by the same straw-like hair that stuck up straight and at the sides of Hunt’s head when it wasn’t peeking out from under a dirty Marlins cap. He muttered everything he said under his breath and what he didn’t, he barked suddenly, like you’d just asked him to repeat it for the tenth time.
He said not a word to me the first time we met. Or the second, or third, or fourth or fifth. He glared at me, grunted, shook his head and walked out of the room. I froze over like a statue whenever he passed by or came near because I couldn’t predict what he was about to do. I didn’t know what he was thinking or anything about him aside from the fact that he threatened to kill me and the people I loved. I could hardly fathom that I was living most days under the same roof as him. The day after he finished an argument with Trish by screaming, “You’ll fucking burn in Hell!” and flipping the kitchen table over with a swipe of his hand, I went and got a second job. I was five months in at the point and I needed to get out faster than I was moving. I’d already been waitressing at what was technically a strip club along the highway and averaging a sad eighty dollars per shift, but I lost a good fraction of it to gas money, so I also got a job at the liquor store next to the place. That way, I could go from one shift straight to the other, in just a matter of steps.
“Too bad you ain’t willing to strip. You’d make a killing with that tight little body.” My boss at the liquor store said that to me just about every day as I pulled on the black tank top and shorts to get ready to leave for my other shift. Her name was Aggie and she was old enough to be my grandma – maybe even my grandma’s grandma – but she kept pushing me to be a stripper, which I found hilarious because it was better than finding it irritating and adding to my increasing list of things to be depressed about.
By eight months in, I confirmed that Trish was using a lot of the money I gave her for drugs. So was Hunt, but from what I gathered, he sold more than he used. I knew it was bad when I was trying to use that to reason that Hunt was an okay guy. I questioned how far my standards had dropped when I appreciated the fact that Hunt at least cleaned up his mess of needles. I practically admired that he could remember to do that in whatever state he’d just shot himself up into. I wasn’t sure anyone did that but him. But I’d seen surprising things in him from the beginning. He always tried to balance out whatever grief Trish or Dean was giving me. He spoke only a bit more often than Dean did, but what little words he used were often a means of trying to make me laugh or feel better. Every time he did it successfully with some one-liner, I’d wish he had more for me. I’d ache to hear something else funny from his mouth. But he’d have reached his speaking quota for the day and I’d find myself straining comfort from the fact that I enjoyed what he had to say enough to actually want more of it. And that in itself was something to celebrate.
At least it was at Sunstone.
I took what I could get, especially as Trish starting spending whole days, sometimes two or three, completely strung out. I used that time to open up a personal bank account in secret. But I still came home with enough money for her that she didn’t make my life a complete living hell. Not that random things wouldn’t still set her unpredictably off. We were eating outside on the plastic table one night, just her, me and Hunt. I didn’t want dressing on my salad and she went completely berserk. She accused me of looking down on her, thinking she had bad taste or bad judgment and lived a bad lifestyle. She threw her salad in my face and stormed so hard through the door of the trailer that it fell further off its hinge. I stared at it and almost yelped when I saw her howling face appear suddenly through the screen door again. She jabbed her finger into her chest and then into the cheap mesh.
“I’m trash? You’re trash. You are trash, Lake DePalma! Trash!”
Her vocabulary wasn’t extensive yet I always let her remarks get to me. Hunt tossed me some napkins to wipe the dressing off my shirt. “You ain’t,” he said with a nod at the door. “She’s the one whose name is a letter from trash.” The joke went over my head for a good five seconds but then I looked up at him with pure surprise and he broke into a grin. “Shit, I knew you didn’t think I could spell.” I rolled my eyes but laughed. Thank God someone could still make me laugh.
I didn’t particularly like Hunt most of the time. He was friends with guys from the park that I thought were disgusting and he never so much as flinched when they said or did something revolting to me. He’d just look away and drink his beer. I hated the way he yelled, “Fuck!” out of nowhere with volume that electroshocked my heart. It was always over something little, like dropping a fork or being unable to find his lighter. Most of all, I hated that he swaggered around like a zombie when he was on his benders, and once, in a haze of delirious, drugged-up glory, whipped his floppy dick out and told me to put my mouth on it. He’d called me by another girl’s name though, so that was my excuse to give him. He thought I was someone else. He’d never do that to me.