My life was destroyed when my husband died. Since then, I’ve been just moving through the days with little purpose. Then my juvenile delinquent nephew was dumped on my doorstep. And we began to move into new lives, together.

The Beneficiary, by Karin Bishop

Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton

Part 1

2/6

I don’t know what they expect of me; how in the world am I supposed to care for Steven when it’s hit or miss that I can take care of myself? I’ve already written out all my guilt and sorrow over Debbie’s death so I’m not going to hash it out all over again. Except that this morning I got a certified letter from her lawyer, a Thomas Ketchum, and there were two letters inside, one from the lawyer and a super-sealed one from Debbie. I teared up looking at the little lines she’d made on the flap; when we were girls it was our little secret, to know if anybody opened our letters.

The lawyer’s letter said I’m the only next-of-kin and the beneficiary of Debbie’s will, and I’m going to have full care and custody of Steven when he gets out of the hospital. That creep Debbie had married was long gone with no family; our family is gone and it’s only been Debbie and me since ’03 and yeah, I knew I was next-of-kin but what the hell am I going to do with a fourteen-year-old boy? The lawyer Ketchum blah-blahed on about funds set aside for me and for Steven and everything and I figured, what the hell, he’d be eighteen in three years so maybe I can tough it out and then kick him out.

Right. Well, I’m going to crawl into bed with Debbie’s personal letter. She’d lasted two days in the hospital–her own hospital!–before dying, and wrote it then. Probably heavy stuff and I’ll be bawling my head off and damn that drunk driver for killing my sister!

2/7

God, I don’t believe it! I’ve been thinking about Debbie’s letter for every second of the whole day. It’s still not enough time to digest all the shocks in it. I was going to copy it in this journal, but there’s too much there; I’ll tuck it in the end flap but this is the gist of it. Part history, part confession, and all of it painful to her to write and to me to read. She’d started by explaining that she knew she was dying; she was a nurse and could tell. She knew what drugs could be given her to keep her lucid and strong enough to write this lengthy letter and had badgered her …former co-workers–doctors and nurses–to keep her awake to write and then let her die in peace. There was some rambling in the letter here and there but even without the accident, it was written by a woman in mortal pain.

Steven’s been a shit. He’s been truant, his grades are Ds and Fs, and the whole bit–smoking cigarettes, smoking dope, drinking. He’d been busted twice for shoplifting, and once for vandalism. He was arrested for beating up a homeless guy but there was not enough evidence so he was let go. And he was only thirteen then! It was like he’s trying to outdo his father in criminal macho stupidity. I told her Dave was no good! Mark told her, God bless him and keep him safe, and she told him she knew it. She knew it, she knew it, she knew it but she stayed with Dave until he cleaned out their savings and split. Probably in Mexico, or he’s in a landfill somewhere. I vote for the landfill.

So Steven is not just coming to live with me–he’s a junior thug. And he’s going to live with me?

That was the shocking first part of the letter, and after wading through her apologies I got to the even more shocking part. Debbie had tried all sorts of counseling and internet help groups and was at her wit’s end but had made a decision and the decision was …to feminize Steven. Her own son! She planned to turn him away from the bad road he was headed and onto …well, who knows what road? I know that she had the smarts to do what she planned. She was always the smart one, my pretty little sister. In the two years since Mark died I’ve come across so many things that he’d taken care of, that I have no clue about, and often I’ve wished I was as smart as Debbie. Except that I married a wonderful, caring man and she married a criminal shit …

Debbie had already acquired the things she needed, and she wrote that she’d gotten another nurse friend of hers to go to her house and box everything up and send it to me two weeks after she died, so it should arrive soon. Inside would be pills and CDs and even an instruction booklet. She joked about it being a kit ‘to build a softer, gentler Steven’ and had assembled the items from the internet and her hospital over the last year and had started the pills months before the crash that killed her. She had been waiting for Steven’s school year to end to ‘go onto the next step’–whatever that was.

There were things in the letter to guilt-trip me into following her last instructions to me, and she apologized for not having told me about the money. And that was the third shock in the letter: Dave was a professional criminal who had been stealing and scamming for years, and his final theft was to clean out their bank account before disappearing. But Dave wasn’t the only sneaky one. Debbie had ‘come to her senses’ about Dave long ago, shortly after Steven had been born, and only stayed with Dave for the sake of the boy. A son needs his father, she reasoned, never dreaming that the father would be such crap and the boy would turn out no better. She said that if she’d had a daughter she would have had no qualms about leaving Dave years ago–and that’s what got her to thinking. If Steven weren’t ‘a chip off the old block’, then Dave would have left sooner. If Steven had been a mama’s boy, or a sissy–or better yet, a girl–Dave would have split. Whenever Dave was back from one of his schemes, he’d overcompensate by taking Steven out to do ‘guy things’ like ballgames and such, swaggering and bragging and making Steven idolize him. And Steven seemed to be idolizing Dave right into the life of a criminal.

So Debbie had snooped around and found traces of Dave’s ‘earnings’ here and there–a stray bank account slip, a backpack stuffed with cash in the back of the closet because he got home too late. She helped herself to a bit here, a bit there, over the years, reasoning that it was money that Dave would give Steven, right? Only she knew that Dave kept everything and doled out just the amounts she needed for food and rent and clothes and even then he complained, the shit.

Over the years she’d set up a bank account unknown to Dave, and gathered what she called her ‘nest egg’ as a cushion for when Dave did what he ultimately did–clean out their joint account and vanish. She’d been allowed a few thousand to keep but Dave had ‘explained’ that ‘she had a job, didn’t she?’ and let’s face it–he didn’t care about her or Steven. Thank God she had the nest egg and thank God Dave had never discovered it or what she’d done; that was the benefit of taking a little at a time.

The only thing was …Debbie had a feeling that Dave had not gone to Mexico, except metaphorically. She had terrible guilt that other bad guys had killed Dave, and that she was responsible. She’d thought that he’d been unusually successful and was surprised at the amount of money she’d found in a suitcase he’d brought home. Maybe it was greed, she wrote, but she figured the percentage she took was still small, even though it was quite a sum. As near as she could figure out, Dave had been holding the money to transfer it to somebody else. The shortfall was noticed, Dave had to clean out the family account to try to make up the difference, and perhaps he didn’t go to Mexico after that–Debbie thought that the bad guys had killed Dave, to teach others a lesson not to cross them. It was all the stuff out of a trashy novel or soap opera except that it was all real and had happened to my sweet, long-suffering little sister Deborah.

The lawyer’s letter had made reference to an account being set up for Steven’s care; I’d kind of glossed over it at the time in my shock about having to take care of Steven. I really hadn’t given him any thought. Debbie had carefully filtered reports of him over the years so they were bland updates and nothing had ever stuck out. Mark had made a comment about Debbie having her hands full in a couple of years, back when he’d tried to talk her into moving in with us. We’d been struggling to get the inn going and it might have been the best thing for all concerned, but Debbie had gently refused. I wonder now how much of that decision was because she was pilfering money from Dave to stockpile for Steven?

Then Mark died and I fell apart and the inn went to shit and I’m slowly rebuilding it and myself and now, Oh, God; poor Debbie!

I can’t write anymore.

2/9

Okay. Got things to work out. Steven arrived today by something they call a ‘cabulance’–God, I hate words jammed together like that! It’s a long-distance ambulance transporter thing. Anyway, they came up the road from the lake and suddenly it was all descending on me–the reality that inside that thing was my nephew Steven, the mini-Dave. I felt gloom drape me like a cold fog.

He’s still recovering but is past the point of needing constant doctoring. Both legs, several fingers, and his pelvis were broken, and his face was mashed and rebuilt. The macho jerk had not been wearing a seatbelt and shouldn’t be alive, but he was, and severely messed up, maybe for life. The cabulance guys had a bunch of things with them, including a special bed-frame thing so he could pull himself up, and crutches and a wheelchair and basically all sorts of invalid goodies, a small gym bag, and a laptop.

I don’t know how I’m going to take care of the inn and Steven. I just had another girl quit, complaining about the pay, and the few that stay are holding on by their fingernails out of loyalty. There are a few locals who still dine here out of loyalty, too, and although we haven’t had all six cabins booked since last year, I pray to God that this season will pull us back to where we were.

But now I have a smashed-up fourteen-year-old punk to deal with.

Okay, got him settled. He was kind of dopey from whatever they gave him for the long ride, but it wore off and he seems to have two settings: genuinely in pain, and being a shit. I can’t see any traces of the cute little boy I vaguely remember from a dozen years ago, before Mark and I moved here to start our B&B. Steven had been a little cherub, curly blonde hair and apple cheeks and smiles and kisses for his Aunt Donna–he’d called me ‘Andonna’–and I’d seen pictures over the years, of course. He was small for his age, and thin like Debbie–Lord knows where she got the strength for those long hours as a nurse–and maybe he overcompensated for his size, as well as trying to emulate his father, the big successful thief.

Steven is still small, at least judging from fourteen-year-olds I’ve seen at the lake, and has very long, very thick dirty blonde hair. He keeps it back in a ponytail, low on his neck, and it reminds me of old photos I’ve seen of Gregg and Duane Allman, of the great Allman Brothers Band, which was probably the rocker look he was going for. It certainly couldn’t have been easy for him in school–or out of school–when he was as small and small-boned as he was. He probably overcompensated with macho swagger.

But now Steven is whiny, complaining, demanding, and exasperating all at once. I realized that Debbie had had hundreds of patients just like him over the years. I’d once asked her about that–never dreaming that my own nephew would be one of them–and Debbie had said you can’t take it personally, you have to let it roll off you. She said you kind of step outside yourself and ‘shine it on’. So I had to do that with Steven, and actually, it makes it easier to do what I guess I have to do …if I’m going to comply with my sister’s last request.

And, God help me, I’m honor-bound to comply.

Debbie had started Steven on the pills months ago. There were just one-a-day type vitamins, supposedly, and Steven was used to them. So I held up the two little jars and said, ‘Remember these?’ and he’d just nodded and taken his daily pills. He took other pills, too, for the pain and to balance things while he healed, and had no problem taking medicine. Only …these pills were an androgen blocker and female hormone, Debbie’s letter explained carefully. One a day of each. There were a lot of things in the package that had arrived yesterday, from Debbie’s nurse friend. Besides the pills, there was a jar of powder to mix up in orange juice or fruit juice once a week; I was to tell him it was a protein shake.

The CDs in the box were interesting. They were from a company in Albany, New York, that did hypnosis, self-training, type of CDs. There was a brochure and they had things to help lose weight, quit smoking, become more assertive, and so on. Do they have one to mend a broken heart from the death of a wonderful husband? I wondered, but no, they didn’t. And they had a line designed to ‘socialize’ rambunctious young men. Reading the brochure closely, I realized there were a lot of code words in the literature, and Debbie had said in her letter that it was her intent to feminize Steven. She meant to instill in him some of the traits typical to females, talking and observing rather than bragging and acting out; to replace the macho competitive instinct with the feminine instinct for sharing and healing, and a host of other personality traits. I noticed that the CD company didn’t say anything about pills or powders; obviously that was something Debbie had added.

Well, my sister always knew a lot more about things than I did. I’d gone for the silly Liberal Arts degree specializing in Literature and not become a teacher, so I was the fool. She’d targeted Nursing right from the start–even as little girls playing with dolls, she was often a nurse. God, I miss her!

So if the pills, powders, and CDs are my sister’s last bequest to her child and last request to me, I’m going to honor them. I think I’m going to dedicate this journal to the ongoing Steven story.

2/13

What a jerk! I’d been talking with Tina, one of my two waitresses, who was quitting. I was trying to talk her out of it and I think she was wavering. She’d been groped by Ed Sanders, one of the local fisherman, one too many times and had dumped coffee on his crotch. I’d calmed Ed down but Tina was another matter. Steven rolled his wheelchair into the room without me hearing him and Tina stared at him a little too hard because of his face.

The doctors said that the face has been rebuilt successfully and there will be no scarring; they’d managed to–it’s icky to even think of it!–remove his skin in his hairline, peel it down and do the reconstruction they needed and then put the skin back with the sutures up in the hair. But it had left Steven with a baby-smooth, pulled-taut face like some Beverly Hills dowager’s plastic surgeon had pulled too tightly. It gave him a creepy look but the docs said the skin’s natural elasticity will loosen enough in time to make him look more natural, but his face might always look slightly taut.

So Tina stared and that pissed off Steven, I guess, because he sneered, ‘Nice tits, babe!’ and that was the final straw for Tina. She spun on her heel to me, took off her small black apron and said, ‘Sorry, Donna, but I quit!’ and that was it. I turned on Steven and told him never to talk to a woman that way again, and he just kind of went, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and waved a hand and wheeled out of there.

Okay, if I had any reservations about mellowing out this macho jerk, they’re gone now!

2/15

With Tina gone, I’d had to waitress for Valentine’s Day. Thank God the locals still consider us a romantic place, because we were jumping! And my feet and back paid for it, because I haven’t waited tables for years. My hat’s off to Tina and all the other girls I’ve employed, because it can be hard work. And then the poor things sit around, night after night, with nothing to do when we’re slow.

But I’m sore and I had a good long soak and while I was there I thought about getting the CDs going. Two ways: The first is to buy him an iPod. I was surprised that he didn’t have one already, actually; I thought every kid had one. Heck, I even have one, although I don’t listen to it too much. Anyway, the instruction booklet had a way to set up the iPod on iTunes so the programming–the stuff from the CD–gets installed as an EQ setting, and so no matter what the person listens to, it runs through that fake EQ setting and the subliminal stuff gets mixed in.

The second way is while sleeping, and that’s a bit trickier but with better results. As sore as I was today, I went into town to the Radio Shack and got the stuff the instructions recommended. I picked up other things, as well, of course; gas is way too expensive for single-purchase trips! Steven was out on the deck, his wheelchair tilted back. It seemed like the best time, so I went into his room and mounted the speaker under the bed the way it said to, and plugged the transmitter into my little CD player. I put on some Sting and went back to Steven’s room; I could hear the music so it worked, and I followed the directions about lowering the level. Then the actual CDs had a disk with a single track on it to test; I started it and all I could hear was a slight sighing sound, like a small breeze moving leaves. I went back to my room and for some reason wrote down the word ‘orange’. Then I turned the page of the booklet and it asked if I’d written the word ‘orange’! Chills went down my spine at how quickly and easily I’d been manipulated! But it had worked–man, how it worked!

I’m in bed now, writing this. Steven’s been asleep for about an hour and I’m about to turn my lights off, so I’m starting my CD player, with the first full disk installed. It will play for nearly an hour and a half, enough to go through a sleep cycle, apparently. And I play that one for a week, on to the next, and so on.

We’ll see.

2/20

Wow. Wow! It must be the CDs, because the last two days, Steven’s actually been human! The instructions said that the first noticeable changes will be less aggression, more willingness to help, and other nice personality traits. It’s been only four nights, but Steven was bearable yesterday, and actually helpful today. I’ve been making his meals, of course. Breakfast has been scrambled eggs and a toasted bagel, lunch has been a sandwich–ham or turkey, usually–and soup, and dinner a salad and fish or chicken. The kitchen whips them up for me, usually. But this morning, Steven asked if he could help make breakfast. Since he’s in his wheelchair–he’s supposed to get out of it soon–he couldn’t really do anything in the kitchen, but it was nice that he offered.

2/28

Steven’s doctor visit. Dr. Samuel Bunting, an old name for a fairly young guy. He checked Steven’s vitals and living conditions and said everything looked great but he needed to move onto crutches. We worked with Steven until the doc said he was okay for crutches on his own and that was that. He did warn to keep Steven out of the sun while healing for two reasons; his skin was ultra sensitive because of the suturing and trauma, and also ultra sensitive because of some of the healing medications. That reminded me that it was time for Steven’s second protein shake. He stood, shaky, on his crutches while I made it and we chatted and he was almost pleasant, but got very tired after drinking the shake and went back to lay down. He was gently snoring when I passed so I figured, what the heck, and ran the CD program. I stood listening for a tiny bit–I didn’t want to start writing ‘orange’ everywhere!–and went to work.

Had a staff meeting; I’m down to Don and Eduardo as cooks, Bonnie and Carole as hostesses/waitresses, and of course, Tim. Tim is my rock; he had worked for the previous owners, and is a combination handyman, groundskeeper, and all-around good guy. He was a recovered alcoholic and lived in a small cabin off the curve of our six cabins, with the tool shed right behind him. Tim knows everybody and everything and where all the bodies are buried, and is the sweetest guy. When Mark had died and I’d kind of flirted with the bottle, it was Tim who convinced me to not take the dive into drinking. One of these days I’m going to find out his real story, but I value him too much as a friend as well as a worker to intrude.

3/3

Steven’s first day with a tutor. Kind of a stiff guy from the nearest high school, who moonlights as a private tutor. Roy Haynes is his name, and I pointed out that he had the same name as the great drummer. Nothing. Blink-blink. Hope he knows his subjects better than he knows American jazz! His face was impassive when he met Steven and afterwards he–the tutor–said that he’s ‘woefully lacking’ in his knowledge and ‘it’s going to be an uphill climb’ to bring Steven up to speed, meaning where he should be as an eighth grader. Well, Debbie’s letter had warned me.

After the tutor left, I went to ask Steven how it went. He had fallen asleep on his back–he naps all the time and needs to, for the healing–and his shirt was kind of pulled aside on his chest. To my amazement, his nipples were bigger than a typical boy’s, and there was a very slight swelling that was only visible from my angle. It looked like the months of Debbie’s pills were taking effect! It’s going to make life interesting …

I came back later and he was on his laptop, the one possession that had come with him besides some scraps of clothes. I had asked about his clothes at home but he’d just shrugged and said there was nothing he cared about. Immediately after Debbie had died, I’d had to fly back to her place and clean it out and boxed up what I thought needed to be kept and donated the rest to charity. I’d boxed up his clothes, too. Everything had been shipped to a storage unit the inn kept for old furniture and fixtures, and was still there. I was waiting for the day when I felt strong enough to sort through the items of my sister’s life. But since Steven was living in a bathrobe and a couple of t-shirts and very baggy, Velcro-ed jammies, I hadn’t pressed to get his clothing.

Steven was working on iTunes on his laptop, loading up his iPod. As a sort of ‘welcome home’ present, I’d given him a $50 gift card and he was depleting it with a vengeance. I was glad that he’d have some music to listen to, and was glad that I’d gotten the fake EQ program installed before handing it over; now he’d be used to the sound through that filter. I’d check from time to time to make sure that EQ setting was still selected, but Steven didn’t seem to care about sound quality as long as it was loud, if the sounds from his laptop were any indication.

I got his attention and he paused the track and we chatted. When I asked about the tutor, he just shrugged. I told Steven that I am going to be a hard ass about him doing the work; he’s got to get up to speed and some of the things he’d been into when he lived with Debbie were absolutely not going to happen here. I put on my sternest face and he either got the message or knew enough to give me the impression he did; probably the latter.

3/14

Steven’s getting around on the crutches better, but learned it’s dangerous to get frisky in the kitchen. One crutch hit a wet patch; he went down fast and hard and he actually shrieked with the pain. I got him back to bed and gave him a protein shake to wash down his pain meds and after whimpering for a while he fell asleep. It’s strange looking at him; when he’s asleep his face is angelic. I’d written a few weeks ago that when he was little he had looked cherubic; now he looks that way again when his tight face relaxes in sleep. I helped wash him last week and saw the stitches in the hairline; they’re almost like a face lift. But he’s so lucky he’s not disfigured. Quite the opposite–he’s almost pretty.

It looks like the ‘girl meds’–as I call them in my mind to differentiate between them and the ‘pain meds’–are kicking in. I mentioned seeing the gentle swell of a breast when he was sleeping. It could be the healing process, or the enforced indoor time, but his skin is marvelously smooth and clear–where it’s not scarred and healing, of course. The doctors did a great job on his broken legs; they weren’t compound fractures, thank God, but a lot of hairline fractures so nothing poked through his skin. I’m not sure how they got in to work on his pelvis; I did notice sutures an inch or so above his …well, what would be his butt-crack if he was a plumber! I haven’t seen his genitals, so I have no idea what’s going on there.

But the big change has been Steven’s demeanor. He hasn’t snapped or been surly for days and days. It was like the best day that he had, and the next one and the next one are just like the best day. He’s not high or giddy; he’s just not an asshole–and believe me; that’s a big difference!

End of Part 1