Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 07:30:14 -0500
From: Tom Cup <tom_cup@hotmail.com>
Subject: Kevin - Series Chapter 25

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I am please to introduce a very promising author in Richard Dean.  His first
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with an American who falls in love with a Brazilian street boy.  This story
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Kevin
Chapter 25
Crossroads

>From the biography of "The Lion of Bolognia:"

What would I change? So many things and so few things.  When I look back
over the course of my life, I see the meadow in full bloom as well as the
dangerous snow covered precipice. They are both beautiful but in their own
ways.

We all come to crossroads in our lives.  What use is wondering, after you
have traveled down the left lane, what would have happened if you turned
right?  There is no turning back. Once you make a turn, to your right or
your left, that crossroad disappears; it ceases to exist. I could wish this
or that but, in the end, nothing I could do or say would have changed
anything, for any of us.  We came to the crossroads. We made choices.

*****

Barb had been drunk that night, high on pot and cocaine, when she stumbled
laughing into Pat's Steaks.  She fumbled with the coins in her hand,
managing to spill them onto the floor.  She was on her hands and knees,
trying to gather the coins, the manager was frantically trying to get her
attention -- "ma'am, ma'am" -- when someone grabbed her arm. She had tried to
break away but the man's grip was firm and he lifted her to her feet.

He told her to forget about the money. He bought her the cheese steak with
fried onions and ketchup.  She had been embarrassed by the entire incident
and apologized profusely.  He smiled and asked her name.  She hadn't been
lucid enough to ask his, or had she?  If she had she didn't remember.

She sat with her silent benefactor, eating the steak sandwich and sipping on
the beer he bought.  She was thankful that she could keep her buzz going.
She told him about her misfortunes: pregnant at seventeen, forced into
marriage by an abusive father, miscarriaging and then abandoned.  The man
listened.  She drank. He offered to drive her home. She had nowhere to go,
and so, she stayed with him that night.

He was awkward with her, she remembered.  She wished now that she could
remember something more about him.  She only glanced at him a few times
during a night that lasted until morning.  When she woke, he was gone. She
stuffed the three hundred dollars he left on the nightstand in her bra.  She
didn't think of him again until she missed her period.

She thought about aborting the child, and might well have, had it not been
for the fact that she could not afford the procedure.  But there was another
reason also. The miscarriage, and her husband leaving her, made her feel
empty and worthless. She wanted the child.  She wanted a baby that would
look up into her eyes and think that she was the greatest thing on earth.
She wanted the baby because she knew the baby would love her, need her, and
would never know what a fuck up she had once been.

Sometime after Kevin was born, on welfare and food stamps with subsidized
housing, Barb's life became an endless party.  The state paid her to stay
home and care for her infant child.  She stayed home, partied and became
pregnant again.  The state gave her more money.  She repeated the cycle,
partying along the way. Now the state which, acted as her parent, encouraged
her to remain a child, and dependent, was threatening to lock her away; like
the mentally ill child, of gothic tales, that is hideously deformed and
locked in the cellar dungeon to live out it's days in squalor and misery.

Kevin didn't know about the miscarriage.  He didn't know about the one night
she had spent with the nameless stranger.  He didn't know how her father had
abused her or how Frank Greer made her feel less than human before he left
her.  Kevin didn't know why she had become so bitter with life. Barb knew.

Barb stared into the bathroom mirror.  She wiped tears from her eyes.  She
was still a pleasant looking woman.  Another tear fell. They try to make
prisons as pleasant to look at as possible so they can hide the ugliness
inside, Barb thought, that's what this body is. It's a prison, a prison that
is hiding a hideous and deformed being. She looked beautiful on the outside.
She felt horrible on the inside. It was ironic. She needed love and wanted
love.  Her children loved her unconditionally from birth.  Somewhere,
someplace, she had turned off to all love, protecting herself from getting
hurt.  It was so gradual that she hadn't noticed.  As nameless men entered
her life, only to leave, she removed herself from the specter of love,
protecting herself from what abandonment brought.  Love became a hurtful
thought. Those that got to close were pushed away. Her children, by nature
of their birth, grew too close.

She hurt the children because she refused to love or be loved.  She refused
to let her past surface, refused to deal with her failures, regrets, and
hurts. She refused to remember the past. She followed the new age maxim and
lived in the present. As the adage goes, she was doomed to repeat the past.

She looked into the mirror; the eyes staring back at her were Kevin's. She
remembered looking into his newborn eyes. He looked at her with hope and
pleading. She remembered how proud he was when he took his first step.  She
smiled.  They were so happy that day. Then Donna was born. Kevin got lost.
She thought of him as a nuisance and, some times as help. She realized that
he was more help than nuisance.  He had tried, desperately to love her and
to be loved by her but he too gave up

She saw it, remembered it, in his eyes. Few were the moments when his eyes
revealed love.  He looked at her with hope and pleading as he struggled to
take care of one sibling and then the next.  She knew that he was begging
her to show him just a bit of love.  She could have shown, at least,
appreciation. But just as with everyone else that entered her life, she
withheld her tenderness from Kevin, and spent it instead on men who,
themselves, could not love. She watched as love extinguished hope, and
pleading left Kevin's eyes. She had been a horrible mother.  She'd become
worst with age. Barb looked in the mirror. She saw herself.  She hated what
she saw.

Still she counted her blessings.  Jimmy and Robby had accepted her
immediately.  Rich, after some work, was at least cordial; though she sensed
that he was now pulling away, being calculated with his feelings toward her.
  Marcy had always been a mirror of Donna.  The two girls reflected and fed
off of each other's feelings.  It was impossible for Barb to reach Marcy
when all Donna projected was hostility.

`Goddamit let me go! Let me go!"

The sounds of a struggle began outside the bathroom door.

"Evelyn calm down this is only going to make things worst."

The red head... they had finally caught on to the red head.

"I ain't going back. Please! Don't send me back!"

More sounds of struggle.  The housemother was speaking while others subdued
Evelyn.  Donna knew the housemother was giving a warning to the rest of the
house.  It was too late for Evelyn.

"No drugs, no brooze, no sex.  Those are the rules of this house.  Break'em
and you're out of here."

"Fuck you! Fuck you bitch! You fucking bitch....pleeease!"

It was too late for Evelyn.  But the warning came just in time for Barb.  It
was time to break the circle that had brought her to this place.  She wiped
her face, looked again into the mirror and smiled.  She wouldn't fuck up
again.  Not like before.  She had thought that maybe one drink, to calm her
nerves, would be appropriate.  Who could blame her? She was, after all, on
her way to see Kevin. She sighed.  Everyone would blame her: the court, the
housemother, the caseworkers, Kevin.  Besides, she had to face the fact that
she was an alcoholic. Wasn't that the reason she was forced to go to AA? She
was an alcoholic. Yes, I am an alcoholic, she voiced inside, I am also a
mother. She smiled again at the mirror and headed for the meeting with her
eldest son.

*****

Kevin sat stoically in the Bolognia's Rittenhouse apartment.  Barb couldn't
believe how much the boy had changed.  He was a good two inches taller. His
features were fuller, healthier. Marie sat on the arm of the chair with her
arm draped around him.  Barb was captured by how well they looked together;
they might have been posing for a portrait of Madonna and child.

"How have you been?" Barb asked nervously.

"You look good," Kevin said.

"Thanks...Kevin...."

"What do you want?"

Barb heard the venom in his voice.  She might have been crushed by the force
of his words had it not been for Marie gently stroking Kevin's hair.  Kevin
looked into her eyes. She smiled.  He turned back to Barb.

"I'm sorry," he said, "Please go ahead."

Barb looked at Marie in awe.  Barb would have had to scream, yell, punch,
beat, and humiliate the kids to get them to utter the words that Kevin
offered to her from Marie's touch -- and they would have never meant them as
sincerely as Kevin uttered them -- that's what I don't know how to do, Barb
thought, I don't know how to correct with love.  This woman is more mother
than I have ever been.

"I'm sorry," Barb said, "I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have bothered
you."

She got up to leave.  She wanted to leave before the tears started to fall.

"You've come this far," Kevin said, "You might as well say what you came
for."

Barb stared into his eyes.  So confident. He didn't need her. He didn't love
her.  She was a curiosity to him. She shook her head to say that it wasn't
important but she heard her voice speaking, cracked, and broken.

"I'm sorry....  I'm sorry Kevin. It's all I really wanted to say. I know... I've
been a horrible mother, a horrible person.  I just wanted you to know that I
do care.  I give a shit. I love you and I'm sorry."

Barb cried.  She turned away in her chair and cried. It was what she had
known would happen and hoped wouldn't.  He hated her and would not forgive
her.  Why should he? He had everything any kid could want.  Marie was a
beautiful and loving mother.  Barb could see the comfort they held with each
other from the moment she entered the room.  Kevin and Barb never had a
mother and son relationship.  Marie and Kevin did.  The room was full of
their love for one another.  Barb didn't belong in their presence. She
understood that now.  She did not deserve to see this vision of Madonna and
child, and so she turned away and cried.

The hand on her shoulder startled her.  She turned and looked up into
Kevin's eyes.  He seemed cold and dispassionate, examining, searching.  Barb
struggled to understand what he was looking for. He continued to search, his
eyes burned into her.  She could feel nothing by shame and disgust.  He knew
her to well. The examination ended and he walked back to Marie, sat in the
chair, and her arm draped, once again, comfortably around his shoulder.

"I won't forgive you," he said, "I can't forgive you.  You hurt us too much
for that. I'll never forget what you allowed to happen.  But I will give you
a chance."

Barb looked hopefully at him.  He still held that same dispassionate look.
Marie was faintly smiling, as Mary must have when Jesus was about to turn
the water to wine -- Mary told those standing near, "Do whatever he tells
you." -- Marie's smile said to Barb, "This is my son. If you want
forgiveness, do what he says." Kevin was no longer Barb's son.  She
understood that the adoption had gone through and that legally he wasn't her
son.  She understood that. But the look in his eyes, his demeanor,
everything, told Barb he was not her son.  He was a Bolognia and Marie
Bolognia was as surely his mother as if she had given birth to him.  Barb
would do as he asked or permanently be cut off. It truly made no difference
to Kevin.

"What chance?" She cracked.

"A chance to prove you're human, that you aren't an animal that lives only
on instinct."

Marie's expression did not change and neither did Kevin's.  Barb nodded.

"OK," She said, "What? Am I supposed to charge forward and try to rip out
your throat for disrespecting me, to prove you are right in thinking that I
am an animal? I was an animal, Kevin. I admit it. I could sit here and try
to explain it but it wouldn't change what happened, now would it? So I don't
know what to say, OK?"

"Shut up," Kevin said, "I didn't come here to hear you babble about how
sorry you are or how you wish you could change things.  I came here to give
you a chance to prove you are human."

"I...."

"I said `shut up.'  Do you remember Michael Robbins? He was one of the
lawyers that came to the house with me."

Barb nodded.

"He's been watching over the kids while you were detained. He tells me that
they are all doing well.  Their lives have improved considerably since they
were taken from you. All of ours have. I'm thinking we are all better off
without you."

"You're trying to hurt me because I hurt you."

"Shut up! I told you I'd give you a chance. You want us to believe that you
love us? You want us to believe that you're sorry; you care and give a shit?
You want us to forgive you? Here's your chance. Go away. Sign the others
over for adoption and go away. "

"I... I ... can't.... I have to make it right....I...."

"Make it right? Don't you understand that this is the only way to make it
right? I will not love you, ever. Understand this. But I can grow to respect
you. Let them go.  Let them learn what it is to be happy, like I am finally
happy. You can follow your animal instinct and try to gather your brood or
you can be human, and use your reason.  All of the kids were placed with
foster families that hoped to adopt. Rich is happy where he is. Donna and
Marcy are comfortable. Robby and Jimmy would simply be better off without
you. And you, you would be better off starting new. Prove that you care;
that you give a shit. Let them go."

"You're asking me to give up my kids."

Kevin stood up. "Why did you want to see me?"

"I wanted to say I'm sorry and ask you to forgive me. That's all"

"That's all.  `Kevin I fucked up. Kevin I'm sorry,' and we hug? Is that it?
I forget all the abuse. I forget the pain.  I start living in a fantasy
where you are a good and loving mother? What do I get out of it? You nearly
got me killed and I am just supposed to forgive and forget because you feel
bad?"

"Kevin..."

"Shut the fuck up you bitch!"

"Kevin." Marie said. He looked brief at her.

"Do what you want," Kevin said turning back to Barb, "But I will oppose
every attempt that you make to get the kids back.  I will be at every court
hearing repeating the horrors of your motherhood."

Kevin turned to Marie, kissed her lightly on the cheek and then left the
room.

***********************************************************************
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Available at the Tom Cup Library:

Kevin Part 3 - Donna:

This serial story is written from the perspective of the younger sister of
Kevin. Barb, Chuck, Kevin and Rich have all left their imprints on this
young girl's life. Can she overcome the hurt and pains left behind from the
tragic events surrounding her life?
***********************************************************************