made us so this would feel good. But the timing must be proper.”
I hoped that meant marriage, but with me being only fifteen, I wasn’t about to assume a twenty-two-year-old man was talking about commitment of that magnitude. I’d feel so young at times like that.
But he protected me from a lot of the jerk boys at school who I’d have been interested in, the boys that Barb and Melanie talked about all the time. I got so sick of hearing their whining and felt so thankful a mature man kept me from worrying about all that. I tried not to say anything to them about Rawlins or to look down on them for liking guys like Jeremy, Brian, and that weird guy Philippe Stanes, who was undeniably a future candidate for the state penitentiary, in the criminally insane ward no less. Besides, Rawlins bought them nice things too, so they liked him well enough.
And then, on my sixteenth birthday, I saw Rawlins’s picture in the paper with some socialite on his arm. I freaked out! When he came to pick me up at Barb’s house, I had already snipped it out of the paper. I hopped in the car, and after he got in, I held it out. “What’s this, Rawlins?”
He took the scrap, and I could tell he was controlling himself because of the way he inhaled a couple of times through his nose. Then he turned to me and cupped my neck with his hand. He went for some warm type of smile, but he missed the mark a little. My memory finds it smarmy. “This is just my lifestyle, dear one. Of course I’m going to occasionally escort women to these type of functions. You don’t think I could actually take you, do you?”
How my youth betrayed me. I realized how second-class and insignificant to the world-at-large I really was. I should have broken up with him right then. He didn’t even temper his remark with some kind of explanation or reassurance. I should have broken up with him. But I didn’t. I loved him. He’d hold me in his arms as I sat on his lap and tell me what a lovely girl I was, how he’d always be there for me. He was so strong and masculine. Not like Daddy.
I loved my dad. But he was so oblivious and content and Mom had to care for him and not the other way around, which, I know, I really know, was probably harder on Daddy than it was on Mom. But still, it wasn’t the life I wanted for me. And Rawlins made me feel so protected and safe. He told me that he’d give me the perfect life, that he’d make sure I never had to worry about a thing. Nothing like the life Mom and Dad had. My dad was a great dad, but I didn’t want to come home every night to a man so content to have so little. Rawlins wanted it all. And Mom, she got so achy in the shoulders from shelving books all day in that dim library, and her eyesight? Wow, I swore she’d be blind by sixty!
Lillie
The rest of the Bajnoks begin funneling in from the surrounding areas around four o’clock. We Bajnoks stick close to the motherland. Mom and Dad arrive from Bel Air. Dad, giving me a kiss and hug as warm and big as his soul, settles down at the kitchen table and pulls out a Braille copy of Imitation of Christ and a Walkman. He likes to be in the thick of the action, but Sundays never stop rolling around. He greets everyone who makes their presence known and says hi to my cousin Rick before Rick says hi to him. Rick’s a natural, nondeodorant type. Fine for him. It’s the rest of Baltimore that suffers.
Mom folds me into her strong arms and kisses first the top of my head, then my forehead, then my nose, then my lips, then my chin. And then she says in perfect English, “Everything smells delicious, Lillie.”
You’d never know the woman grew up all the way over there.
Her two younger sisters, twins named Babi and Luca, join us in the kitchen for more hugs. I’ve got the greatest family in the world, and any of my neuroses can only be blamed on myself and maybe what happened to Teddy, because if the expectations have always been high, the resources to meet them were
I hoped that meant marriage, but with me being only fifteen, I wasn’t about to assume a twenty-two-year-old man was talking about commitment of that magnitude. I’d feel so young at times like that.
But he protected me from a lot of the jerk boys at school who I’d have been interested in, the boys that Barb and Melanie talked about all the time. I got so sick of hearing their whining and felt so thankful a mature man kept me from worrying about all that. I tried not to say anything to them about Rawlins or to look down on them for liking guys like Jeremy, Brian, and that weird guy Philippe Stanes, who was undeniably a future candidate for the state penitentiary, in the criminally insane ward no less. Besides, Rawlins bought them nice things too, so they liked him well enough.
And then, on my sixteenth birthday, I saw Rawlins’s picture in the paper with some socialite on his arm. I freaked out! When he came to pick me up at Barb’s house, I had already snipped it out of the paper. I hopped in the car, and after he got in, I held it out. “What’s this, Rawlins?”
He took the scrap, and I could tell he was controlling himself because of the way he inhaled a couple of times through his nose. Then he turned to me and cupped my neck with his hand. He went for some warm type of smile, but he missed the mark a little. My memory finds it smarmy. “This is just my lifestyle, dear one. Of course I’m going to occasionally escort women to these type of functions. You don’t think I could actually take you, do you?”
How my youth betrayed me. I realized how second-class and insignificant to the world-at-large I really was. I should have broken up with him right then. He didn’t even temper his remark with some kind of explanation or reassurance. I should have broken up with him. But I didn’t. I loved him. He’d hold me in his arms as I sat on his lap and tell me what a lovely girl I was, how he’d always be there for me. He was so strong and masculine. Not like Daddy.
I loved my dad. But he was so oblivious and content and Mom had to care for him and not the other way around, which, I know, I really know, was probably harder on Daddy than it was on Mom. But still, it wasn’t the life I wanted for me. And Rawlins made me feel so protected and safe. He told me that he’d give me the perfect life, that he’d make sure I never had to worry about a thing. Nothing like the life Mom and Dad had. My dad was a great dad, but I didn’t want to come home every night to a man so content to have so little. Rawlins wanted it all. And Mom, she got so achy in the shoulders from shelving books all day in that dim library, and her eyesight? Wow, I swore she’d be blind by sixty!
Lillie
The rest of the Bajnoks begin funneling in from the surrounding areas around four o’clock. We Bajnoks stick close to the motherland. Mom and Dad arrive from Bel Air. Dad, giving me a kiss and hug as warm and big as his soul, settles down at the kitchen table and pulls out a Braille copy of Imitation of Christ and a Walkman. He likes to be in the thick of the action, but Sundays never stop rolling around. He greets everyone who makes their presence known and says hi to my cousin Rick before Rick says hi to him. Rick’s a natural, nondeodorant type. Fine for him. It’s the rest of Baltimore that suffers.
Mom folds me into her strong arms and kisses first the top of my head, then my forehead, then my nose, then my lips, then my chin. And then she says in perfect English, “Everything smells delicious, Lillie.”
You’d never know the woman grew up all the way over there.
Her two younger sisters, twins named Babi and Luca, join us in the kitchen for more hugs. I’ve got the greatest family in the world, and any of my neuroses can only be blamed on myself and maybe what happened to Teddy, because if the expectations have always been high, the resources to meet them were
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