Velvet Blue

Acknowledgements:

For Eric C., family and friends, a sincere heart felt ‘thank you!’ for all your support, love, patience and kind words.

© 2014 Velvet Blue by Rosemary Carr

ISBN: 9781310357596

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Velvet Blue.

April’s diary-July 7, 1989:

Mother’s never appreciated me and all she can think about is looking for the first line and gray hair. Dad pretty much stays out of my business. I love to stay out late, dress like I’m going to funeral, and hate—absolutely despise—the day. I’m a late sleeper. And pretty much whenever I feel like it, I’ll haul my carcass out of bed. I might raid the liquor cabinet once in a while, but I don’t do it to get plastered til I puke. Mother says I’ve ruined every dinner party she’s hosted. I did the stupid ‘depressed’ stuff like self-mutilation to get attention, but nothing life-threatening and she thinks I’m on my way to being a little sociopath.

My dad is, like, totally dumb. Sometimes I wonder how many drugs he did back when he was my age. One thing that Mom wouldn’t drop was her drinking and her obsession to have a supermodel body. She’s always wearing my black corsets and fishnets. Makes me sick. One time dad threw this party at the house and tried to push me into the modeling world, nude, that is. His friends in the modeling industry dished out their stories at the dinner table about how some of those models (all barely twenty-years-old), will drop by the third day of their photo sessions and they’ll eat paper tissues to get that full feeling in their stomachs.

The darker side of the modeling world, from what I gathered at this one particular dinner, wasn’t glamorous nor was it even something I ever wanted to get into. Those models are required to get intravenous drips to keep their bodies hydrated. Their figures must fit an Ethiopian form. I assume to make up for their lack of eating like the masses, they get paid gazillions, receive expensive gifts, get to travel the world, and I hear some of them become CEO’s and never have to work hard a day in their lives! Oh, and Dad’s a pervert, in case anybody snoops through my diary. He was the scientist that created this gene that was supposed to make a fetus ‘perfect’ and be well-mannered. Well, Mom gave it a try in a trial study. The other women that signed up for the same study, dubbed ‘Velvet Blue’, never carried their babies to term. They had abortions once it was discovered the children they were carrying would have flaws like the rest of human kind. Mother decided it was too late for her and had me anyway. She always told me if she had to do it over again, she would have gotten that abortion and received sizeable compensation. I don’t know why Dad constantly flies all over nowadays, but he brings back the most phony, sleazy people that have two things on their mind: mooching and polishing off dad’s wine cellar. Between him and Mother, they’ve bought cases of rare expensive champagne and forbid me to ever touch it. Like, Mom would just die if I touched the stuff.

So, here I am sitting in my dark room, pouring out my emotions to you, dear diary. I dyed my hair jet black with blue highlights the night before last. I run around Cherry Ville mall looking like death warmed over and have been kicked out of all the clothing stores. I’ve also been accused of shoplifting more times than I can count on one hand. I pay for my damn stuff and don’t ‘wear’ it beneath my clothes. So, like, I found myself lingering in a lingerie store recently and overheard this couple having wild sex in the dressing room. I giggled and thought, I’d like to try that sometime. I haven’t found a man yet, but it’s a thought. Cherryville mall is located in the bad part of the city, which attracts losers, posers, and weirdoes like me. One time Dad told me the boring story that it was once a thriving shopping center where the snobs and yuppies shopped. Nowadays, it’s a dive, much like a bar, only without the alcohol. I hang out at the mall just to avoid my parents. They never care to ask me how my day went or who I met. Hell, if I find me a man, I’m going to run off with him the first chance I get.

I hope and pray I’ll never end up looking like my mother. She’s had so much cosmetic surgery she looks fake. And her boobs are so augmented that it’s unnatural and sick, especially when they’re on the verge of spilling out. Dad’s proud of her and loves all the attention he gets when he parades her around.

When I turned down the nude modeling offer from the sleazy photographer at the dinner party that’s when Dad held a grudge. We weren’t on speaking terms for the first year and a half, then gradually, Dad made a half-ass effort to talk with me. I never did graduate and quit attending the snobbish private school where all the rich kids dress in uniforms. Looking freakish carries an automatic two-day suspension for the third offense. I just couldn’t cram my brain with all that useless dribble about social studies, how man originated from apes, and their sex ed was a joke. Duh, if the guy just looks at the condom instead of using it, the chance is great that he’ll get the girl knocked up when they do it. I laughed out loud when one girl in my class asked the teacher if she could get pregnant from a vibrator. It’s plastic for crying out loud and runs on C-batteries. I couldn’t quit laughing and was told to report to the principal’s office. It made for a memorable moment that day.

Since then, Mother’s gone under the knife and looks like a life-sized blow up inflate-a-date and also started selling sex toys as a way to make a sideline income. She’s a realtor and doesn’t need the extra money. She’ll just blow it on her body, more alcohol, and god only knows what else. She doesn’t think I know about her secret ‘ passion parties’ she throws, but I do. I just never interrupt her because she tries to throw these stupid bachelorette and bridal parties when she thinks I’m not home. Why does a woman want to please herself and why would a vibrator take the place of a real man? I think about sex so much that I must be what they call a ‘nymphomaniac’. I haven’t lost my virginity, maybe that’s why.

Late one night April was given a lift home by Stan, whom she just met. April had a fake I.D. to get into the Inferno nightclub. He took her dancing and they played several rounds of pool. It was all fun, but he had a few too many and it didn’t impress the nineteen-year-old. Stan was clean-cut in appearance and seemed like a half-decent man. April’s Goth makeup is what attracted him, but the fun was over. April just wanted to crash in her own bed and shut out the day. Maybe she’d give Stan a call if she ever got around to it.

After their initial meeting, she’d bump into Stan at the Inferno and they began dating. She never liked him to show up at her parent’s house. He respected her wishes. They got to know each other a little better, and then, Stan appeared to sober up and he seemed like the man of her dreams.

April loved to hang around him for his company. However, she was quick to learn that misery also loves company. And then there was the other lady in Stan’s life: his mother, Blanch.

Stan asked April to come live with him at his place outside of town. April moved out of her parents’ house and left her belongings over there just in case everything didn’t work out.

April got along okay with Blanch in the beginning, but the lady’s intrusive behavior quickly got on the young girl’s nerves. Blanch lived next door and was a frequent visitor. Stan didn’t mind it. After all, his mother came first in the relationship. April had to take a backseat.

Why does everything we do together have to involve your mother? April asked, disgusted by the woman’s meddling.

Because she knows best. She’s my mother, you know.

Do you see me calling up my mother and ask her for advice before I go anywhere or do something? That is so childlike.

I need her in my life. She’s good for us and our relationship. Stan was snippy.

How is she good for us? She’s over here at the ass crack of dawn and doesn’t go home until we run to the grocery store.

I’m not going to tell her to butt out. She’s everything to me. Stan tried to make her see.

She’s ruining our lives, Stan. If I was any other woman, I would have hightailed it out of here a long time ago if I had known she was so nosy.

You think living at home with your parents would be any better? Nah, I didn’t think so because they never intend to leave you a dime of their riches, do they?

No they don’t, April said quietly.

And you’d have no place to live. Stan’s analysis of the situation couldn’t have been more accurate or harsh.

That’s right, too. She let the issue drop.

April quit dressing Goth, settled into sundresses in the summer and pants, shirts and sweaters in the winter. She let her hair grow out and it was once again a beautiful shade of dark blonde. She threw away the dark makeup and tossed most of her cheap lingerie in the garbage in an attempt to improve her situation, but it didn’t. Her life with Stan and his mother was like sharing him to the world.

She had to admit that even from the beginning, something wasn’t right in her relationship with Stan. Their first time alone was awkward as April remembered it. She shed her clothes and Stan threw her a dazed stare, then resumed his beer and channel-surfing.

Mortified and confused, April had donned her clothes, shut herself in the bathroom, and cried. It wouldn’t be the first time she felt like picking up the phone to call her parents, but the day she left, she had no intention of ever going back. Her mother would chalk it up as another failure in her daughter’s life that didn’t pan out. April’s father would just ignore her completely.

Then one day, April skimmed through an advice column in a local paper. The lady that wrote in was in a near similar predicament like April’s and very dissatisfied with the man she fell in love with. The thirty-something woman was dating a mama’s boy and his mother would accompany them everywhere they went. The man’s mother seldom gave them any alone time and whenever he said, Sweetheart, the ladies didn’t know which one he referred to. The advice columnist responded that if the woman was unhappy, then she should leave and find happiness with a mature man. April didn’t believe that article might have possibly been a sign from the Lord.

On a nightly basis Stan drank heavily. Instead of intervening like any well-intended parent would, Blanch would run to town and pick him up a thirty-pack of beer. He’d guzzle it down in less than a week. April stood by silently and watched the deterioration unfold before her displeased eyes. The more he drank, the greater April would take out the berating on herself. She’d pretend to eat, gobbling down mouthfuls of food and soda to wash it down. Stan would gripe at her to act civilized at the dinner table. Nothing got under his skin more than watching her choke down her food in a hurry. April, on the other hand, had no clue most of the time how her odd eating habits appeared to those around her.

Stan snatched the cutlery from her hands and slammed it down on the table, whisked their plates to the trash, and scraped them. April sat there stunned, and for a moment, speechless.

Why do you waste food like this and make me toss it out? It gets expensive to feed you. Damn, didn’t your parents ever teach you any table manners? You act like a grownup toddler sometimes, I swear. Stan set the plates in the kitchen sink. Cutlery clanked. He returned to the table and snagged the soda from her grasp.

Starting tomorrow you’re going on a diet. He poured the contents of the soda down the sink, crumpled the can and threw it in the trash.

At least I don’t make mother run to the store and pick out my brand of rotgut beer, and I don’t get all bent out of shape when it’s the wrong kind.

April, please! Will it make you happy if I quit drinking cold turkey? Stan proposed.

You did before I moved in and I was so proud of you!

Yeah, yeah... I just said that because I wanted to see that gullible look in your eyes. I wasn’t really serious about quitting.

Her smile turned into a frown. She looked at the table, then at him. Stan was, and probably always would be, the one fish in the sea that nobody wanted to reel in. Every night they went through the same suppertime drama. April eventually learned not to pester Stan over his excessive drinking. She tried to maintain a level of normalcy at the dinner table, but something unexplainable inside her drove to her act like that in front of him. He wasn’t without his visible quirks, either. Aside from the constant drinking, he loved to flip through porno magazines stashed out in his garage.

April quit trying to tell Stan how much it killed her inside to see him destroy himself. He’d go through short spurts of sobriety, then quickly slide back into his old routine. It was a common rut he seemed comfortable with. April had enough one evening over his drinking. Sharp and intelligent, she went off on him in a verbal fight that quickly became nasty.

Stan, do you know how many lives alcoholism ruins every year aside from the drunk driving aspect?

Let me guess: one in fifty-thousand? Why should it matter to me or you? His tone became impatient.

Because I’m worried about you. April was concerned.

Just because I was admitted to the hospital to receive a saline drip isn’t cause for alarm. I was just a little dehydrated, that’s all and it had nothing to do with my drinking.

You had fifteen beers the night before. How a man can drink that much and not puke is beyond me. Something has to give, Stan.

You’re right about that. But why should I give up my drinking when you continue to eat like a Neanderthal? I’m sick of hearing this from you all the time. Stan stormed out of his house rather than stay and hear her out.

By this point, April thoroughly had herself convinced that she was the root cause of all his misery. He didn’t stick around because she was always flying off into a mood, and more often than not, he left her alone in tears. Blanch would arrive early, enter the home without knocking, sort through their piles of laundry, do the dishes, watch a little TV, and when she felt like it, she’d go back to her house. As a result, April got no sleep. If it wasn’t for Blanch waking her up, then it was the blaring TV in the living room and constant daytime soap operas that irritated her.

Blanch would sneak in their bedroom like a ninja, watch April sleeping, then pick up a flip-flop and poke her in the shoulder with it to get her to wake up.

"You’re