Chapter
8 - 1987
“I want to show you something,” Grampy brought a piece of
paper over to where I was sitting on the couch. “These are the payments and
total of what you owe on the car I had to sell.
I’m taking off the amount I sold it for, and the balance comes to $950.”
I squirmed in my seat. At nearly twenty years old, I
still shrank back when I knew I’d disappointed him. “I’m sorry, Grampy, I know
I left you with that mess and never called…”
Grampy was referring to my first car, a white Ford Grenada he had helped
me buy during one of my many new starts in life.
After moving south
to live with my mother and sisters, I had made the best of things and walked or
took the bus on Sundays to a vibrant church youth ministry, but my adolescent
heart had become more and more confused and angry as I tried to figure out just
where I fit in on the planet. I wasn’t
tall or smart, like Robyn, nor was I compliant and cheerful like Lisa. My figure had filled out beyond my years, and
I turned a lot of heads when walking down the street, so I clung to that which
made me feel special.
One of the church counselors, a man eight years my senior,
had taken a special interest in me, first offering to drive me home, then
taking me out to eat. It wasn’t long
until his true motives showed and his conversation turned in an explicit sexual
manner. Everything culminated one night
when he told me if I didn’t go through with what he wanted, I would be fearful
for the rest of my life, and never try it again. Confused and frightened, I allowed him to do
with me what he would.
Guilt overcame me and I thought the only way to make it
right was to marry him, which I did illegally, in Las Vegas at the age of
15. He hired and paid a legal escort to
go with him and pose as me to sign papers for the marriage license, using a
doctored immunization card I had provided.
License in hand, he and I drove to The Little Chapel of the Flowers on
July 19, 1982 and said our vows. One
Polaroid photo was offered to us free of charge when we declined a photographer.
Teenaged married life proved to be painful in more ways
than one. My new husband, a private in the Army in Monterey, California, became
progressively abusive. As I lay awake at night, I would devise plans to
secretly sell what little we had for a ticket out of there. Once, his parents bought me a bus ticket to
live with Robyn, who was now a Marine stationed in Chicago, after seeing me with
a swollen, black eye. I lasted a few
days in Illinois until I received a call from their son, offering a bus ticket
back home while promising me his undying love and affection. And so, feeling very alone, dependent and afraid,
I returned.
On New Year’s Eve, 1984, at just 17 years old, I left him
for good. I called Grampy’s youngest son
collect, telling him I was stranded at an airport in Texas. He bought me a ticket to New Hampshire. That fresh start ended with me living in a
car because I was too wild and coarse to be tamed by he and his wife, and they
asked me not to ask Gram and Grampy for help.
I agreed, afraid of this wild stranger I had become, doing whatever I
could to ease the ravaging inner pain, and I too, wanted to shield Grampy,
especially, from my present, reckless lifestyle.
I visited Gram and Grampy often, got mixed up with the
wrong crowd, slept on couches, lied about myself, and generally vacillated
between self-pity and anger. Alcohol and
drugs became a part of my life, and I scraped by the best I could. It was during one of those short-lived bursts
of self-improvement that Grampy had taken me to his car dealer and helped me
buy the Granada to get to and from work.
I promised to pay, and followed through once or twice,
but then parked the car in Grampy’s driveway and decided on a whim to move to Virginia
to live with Lisa and her new husband, after I’d lost yet another job. I had recently become involved with the boy I
had been so fond of the day I was in hiding from my father as a child, and he
followed me out to Virginia a week or two later, only to move us back home to
NH a few months after that.
Eventually, and after many attempts to reach me to find
out if I would reclaim it, Grampy sold the car and let me know. I had avoided all conversation about it,
thereafter.
Now, sitting on his sofa, I stumbled over my reply.
“I’m going to do something for you, Elizabeth. I’m showing you this paper so you can see the
payments I made on your behalf while you were gone. This was an agreement between you and I, but
you didn’t pay me, so I had to sell the car,” Grampy’s voice had a firm, yet
gentle quality, which made me feel even worse for letting him down.
“I’m forgiving you this debt, which means our account is
settled, and we don’t ever have to bring it up again.”
Thinking I should say something, but not knowing how to
express my gratitude, I nodded. Both my
guilt and relief were compounded by his generous, no-strings-attached offer.
“I think Grammy needs you to wash up and help set the table, now.” Grampy put the
ledger in his shirt pocket and walked away, whistling.
I mechanically rose and made my way to the kitchen to
help Gram.
Grampy never mentioned the car or the money again.
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