Lead Shoes-16

Chapter 16

Poor Will…

I’ve never really seen or help anyone before when they’re all upset, but Will is really upset and I pull him inside the house with me and somehow I manage to use my crutches and the fact he’s sort of still able to stand to get us into the living room and the couch.

We just get down and he starts to shake even harder.

“They woke me up…I…I was asleep and I heard the first crashes of stuff getting thrown. They were both doing it. Dad got paid a couple of days ago and stuff but mom was out…she had took off on another bender…and dad…dad had left too and went looking for her and I…I think he ended up at a place with some VLT’s and that was it.”

“VLT’s?”

“Gambling machines…those stupid electric slot things.”

“Your dad was a gambler?”

“Yeah…just…fuck!...Kayla he blew the whole pay check he just fed the whole damned thing into the machine!”

“And your mom?”

“Pfft…fuck her..”

“Will…”

“No!...no she always does this! She can’t stay out of the goddamned bottle Kayla! Why!? What the hell did I do to deserve this huh?”

“I don’t know will I really don’t…I’ve been asking myself the same stuff most of my life.”

He looks at me and stops and he’s blinking tears away and he gets this sad look in his eyes. “God Kayla I’m so sorry…I never thought…I didn’t…”

I reach over and tilt his head and his chin up and I kiss him. Yes…me kissing him. Long and slow and really deeply and letting him know it’s going to be okay.

He knows, he knows my history and the stuff with my birth mom and my dad and even with grandmother. He knows because I told him.

I press my forehead to his and we just stay like that together with our eye’s shut holding each other and just breathing.

“Its okay Will its okay…there’s not one person on the whole damned planet that isn’t messed up some how in some way. If they say they’re fine they’re lying.”

He nods against me and there’s this big almost horrible sigh that comes out of him and I schooch back into the corner of our couch and pull him down.

Really I don’t know what I can do other than that? I just sit there with him and his head pillowed on my chest which honestly has me really feeling…female…nurturing and legitimately female. It’s a nice conformation really that everything we’re doing is all right, is right.

It’s one of those body and heart being able to go yes moments.

Will actually falls asleep there and it’s pretty deep too. I’ve no idea how long he’s been up since or if it’s the stress of everything but he’s hit a deep heavy sleep. I run my fingers through his hair and I hum to him trying to be soothing. It’s actually hard to remember a soothing song to try to use when you need on. Just goes to show that life’s not fiction right?

Mom comes in awhile later and she gets busy doing something and eventually will wakes up and he kisses me and I kiss him back. “You hungry?”

He shakes his head no. “No…just wanna sit here okay?”

“Sure…TV?”

He shrugs.

I decide its likely better just to leave it off for now. I mean after everything that just went down it just doesn’t feel right. He sits up a bit more to look at me and we just sort of stare at each other for awhile.

Okay it’s not just stare but it’s just when you do just sort of look deeply into each other and you kind of have that moment when you’re just connecting in a deeper way than like dating or kissing or maybe even making love.

Alright I really don’t know about the last one on that seeing how I’m still a virgin.

And I want to remain that way at least until I get fixed and all my plumbing issues at least fixed before I go that route. I want the first time that I have a sexual “Moment” to be as the girl that I’m supposed to have been born as.

But this, this is us staring deep into each others eyes and just seeing each other. And that’s more than I ever thought or even dreamed that I’d have. It’s intimacy on a completely different level I think.

Then we’re kissing again and we’re kissing until Mom comes in and she doesn’t do any of the a-typical parent stuff like comment or cough no, no, she does worse she just stands there leaning on the hallway entrance and she watches us.

Do you know how hard it is to get your kiss on why a parent watching you?

It’s way too…ickward.

“C’mon you guys supper.”

We go into the kitchen and for someone who told me that he wasn’t hungry he can certainly put the food away. Though he does admit while we’re eating that he’s not sure when he ate last but he thinks it was a slice of pizza and a can of coke sometime yesterday out of the fridge.

Mom looks at him. “Will we’re going to have to go over to your house and get some of your things okay?”

“Okay…like what?”

“We might need most of it really; I honestly think your mom might be seeing some time for this.”

“But he took a heart attack.”

“Yeah but she attacked the cops and you.”

I look at him. “She attacked you?”

He kind of gets quiet and he looks ashamed, embarrassed maybe. “Yeah…she just wouldn’t stop; she didn’t even seem to get that dad was down.”

I look at him and then his hands and his arms where all the bandages are I gesture to them. “She…?”

“She had a broken bottle and she was going to cut him and I…I had got in the way.”

“She cut you!?”

He just nods. Mom actually reaches out over the table to him and takes his hand and he looks at her. “It’s okay…you here with us Will, both me and Kayla get it, we’ve been through it…sometimes family sucks…sometimes blood is poison.”

He just sort of stares back and there’s that thing between the two of them that you can see. She’s not my Mom or my Aunt right now she’s the girl that went through all the crap she told me about and that’s a big deal.

Sure you can empathize and stuff but unless you’ve been there it’s not the same.

It gets even more surreal and grown up as mom and I do the dishes and have a coffee and we’re talking about stuff that he’s going to have to deal with. Like the house and their things and the funeral and if he wants to fight his mom on the arrangements because they’ll still ask her first even if she’s in jail or prison.

Assault on Will, Will’s Dad, the cops, and involuntary manslaughter charges too maybe, resisting arrest, deadly weapon charges with the bottle. Mom thinks that even with her pulling out all the stops and getting off light, really light she’ll be in there between three to eight…likely more because she’s sure that Will’s mom has a record.

It’s really heavy stuff and Mom’s supportive but she doesn’t pull any punches either she explains that a lot of the stuff is likely going to be left up to him or the courts might decide to take things over if he doesn’t.

He’s frowning into a coffee and I dry my hands and go over to him and sort of lean on his back and rub his shoulders. “Hey Tiger you’ve got us in your corner okay?”

He nods. “Okay…I just don’t know how to do any of this stuff.”

Mom’s getting herself a coffee now. “I’ll help, I know what this stuff’s like and I know what it’s like to do this stuff alone. Will, you don’t have to do this alone.”

He looks at us and there’s a bit of a smile there but it’s a scared hurt one.

……………………………………………….We don’t go to school the next day. Mom actually thought it was best to get as much of the stuff done that we could do done right away. So we clean out the van and we head over to his house.

I’ve never been to his house and it’s in an iffy looking neighborhood. I don’t really mean a bad one but….most of the houses are like old and they just sort of look well seedy. Mom and I don’t live in a great neighborhood either like some people in school but I’d say we’re lower middle class and Will’s place well it’s like middle lower class. Like just able to live in a house instead of the really shitty looking apartments just down his block.

We head inside and oh…

It’s…there’s the smell of old cigarettes and ashed mixed with stale beer and there’s glass everywhere and what looks like vomit…

And while the place is messed up from what happened it’s not really dirty but I’ll say that his mother had only a passing association with Clorox or Lysol. I look around and honestly I can see where the money seemed to have really never made it home.

My Mom’s a lot of things and she’s got a past and we’re still sort of a work in progress but it’s so much more… worse than I thought that was going on here.

We don’t stay long, we don’t. We’re only there long enough to get Will’s things and really there’s not much. Everything he had in his room just takes half of the van.

He’s really quiet though all the way home.

There’s really so much I’ve seen that I’m not sure he ever wanted me to see or to know. And he’s really quiet right now and I want to be there but I really just don’t know what to do.

We get home and we slowly get stuff into his room…the one that Mom had set up and I help by doing the washing for his bedding.

I really wish I new what to do next.