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mallorys_cameraSad, sad, sad, sad news.
Ichabod’s stepbrother Beau, who has been missing for many, many years, turned up yesterday.
He’d had a stroke.
Possibly related to endocarditis: Infectious endocarditis is characterized by severe lesions made up of bacteria, fibrin, platelets and inflammatory cells. Vegetative endocarditis, they call it.
Bits of those lesions get loose, float around in the arteries. Cause emboli. Drive up the blood pressure.
He has a severe pulmonary infection as well.
And there’s evidence of IV drug use.
They ran tests. The HIV test hasn’t come back. I don’t understand how they’ve managed to rule covid out in so short a time, but somehow, they have.
Isabella got a call from an old phone they’d had for Beau years and years and years ago. A anonymous voice telling her that Beau had been dumped in an emergency room at a hospital somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. That’s how they found out.
###
Once when Beau was seven years old, I was having problems with my car.
Specifically, I couldn’t figure out how to get the back seat back up after I’d pushed it down so that I could haul Ichabod’s bike to his father’s.
I’ve never had the slightest bit of mechanical aptitude to begin with, but in those days—25 years ago—I was so unworldly that it never even occurred to me that you could pay other people to use their mechanical aptitude on your behalf. So, I didn’t even know I could take the damn car to a garage.
I did know that I wasn’t gonna ask my X-Husband to look at it.
From this moment on, I thought, I will have to drive a car that only has room for two front seat passengers.
I may have sat down on the ground and started to cry.
Then Beau wandered over. “What’s wrong?”
“My car-r-r-r-r-r,” I wailed.
He opened the hatchback, felt around for a couple seconds. Then, click! The back seat sprang back up.
“Don’t cry,” he said.
He stood and watched me till I wiped the trail of clear snot dangling from my nose with the back of my shirt.
###
My X-husband Bill was so mean to that kid. Etiquette dictated that I stay out of that one, but of course, that’s never possible for me.
One day, I let Bill have it. “The way you treat that kid is horrible! He’s just a little boy! You need to lighten up!”
“You don’t understand,” Bill said. “He is another man’s son. It is biologically impossible for me not to resent him.”
He ranted on and on in that vein for 15 minutes or so.
I think I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I mean, we’re not talking a proud graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Remedial College for Evangelicals here. Bill has a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the fuckin’ University of California at Berkeley.
Did Bill honestly think that if Beau wasn’t there, he could pretend MaryAnn was a virgin when she met him?
Of course, Ichabod tells me that Ben abused him. No, not sexually. With physical violence. I witnessed some shoving. Did I see other things I’ve conveniently forgotten?
Ichabod loathed Ben.
I have to assume that Beau wanted to loathe Bill, too, but apparently they bonded over mountaineering and other outdoor sports when Beau finally reached manhood, which may have made loathing problematic. Ambivalent emotions are always so difficult to juggle.
###
Oh, but there were so, so many awful things that happened in sunshine-y, bright and vacuous Orange County.
That whole Karl saga.
How did Karl end up dead with a bullet through his head at the age of—what was it? Thirteen?
Karl was Beau’s best friend.
And then Bill and MaryAnn kept bouncing Beau in and out of rehabs.
So weird since when Madeline and Isabella hit their teens, Bill and MaryAnn turned a blind eye to their drug use. In fact, Bill even grew their dope.
Oh, I can’t even type anymore.
Poor Beau. Poor, poor, poor Beau.
I don’t even know what to pray for.
Would it be better for Beau if he lived or if he died at this point?
I don’t even know.
Ichabod’s stepbrother Beau, who has been missing for many, many years, turned up yesterday.
He’d had a stroke.
Possibly related to endocarditis: Infectious endocarditis is characterized by severe lesions made up of bacteria, fibrin, platelets and inflammatory cells. Vegetative endocarditis, they call it.
Bits of those lesions get loose, float around in the arteries. Cause emboli. Drive up the blood pressure.
He has a severe pulmonary infection as well.
And there’s evidence of IV drug use.
They ran tests. The HIV test hasn’t come back. I don’t understand how they’ve managed to rule covid out in so short a time, but somehow, they have.
Isabella got a call from an old phone they’d had for Beau years and years and years ago. A anonymous voice telling her that Beau had been dumped in an emergency room at a hospital somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. That’s how they found out.
###
Once when Beau was seven years old, I was having problems with my car.
Specifically, I couldn’t figure out how to get the back seat back up after I’d pushed it down so that I could haul Ichabod’s bike to his father’s.
I’ve never had the slightest bit of mechanical aptitude to begin with, but in those days—25 years ago—I was so unworldly that it never even occurred to me that you could pay other people to use their mechanical aptitude on your behalf. So, I didn’t even know I could take the damn car to a garage.
I did know that I wasn’t gonna ask my X-Husband to look at it.
From this moment on, I thought, I will have to drive a car that only has room for two front seat passengers.
I may have sat down on the ground and started to cry.
Then Beau wandered over. “What’s wrong?”
“My car-r-r-r-r-r,” I wailed.
He opened the hatchback, felt around for a couple seconds. Then, click! The back seat sprang back up.
“Don’t cry,” he said.
He stood and watched me till I wiped the trail of clear snot dangling from my nose with the back of my shirt.
###
My X-husband Bill was so mean to that kid. Etiquette dictated that I stay out of that one, but of course, that’s never possible for me.
One day, I let Bill have it. “The way you treat that kid is horrible! He’s just a little boy! You need to lighten up!”
“You don’t understand,” Bill said. “He is another man’s son. It is biologically impossible for me not to resent him.”
He ranted on and on in that vein for 15 minutes or so.
I think I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I mean, we’re not talking a proud graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Remedial College for Evangelicals here. Bill has a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the fuckin’ University of California at Berkeley.
Did Bill honestly think that if Beau wasn’t there, he could pretend MaryAnn was a virgin when she met him?
Of course, Ichabod tells me that Ben abused him. No, not sexually. With physical violence. I witnessed some shoving. Did I see other things I’ve conveniently forgotten?
Ichabod loathed Ben.
I have to assume that Beau wanted to loathe Bill, too, but apparently they bonded over mountaineering and other outdoor sports when Beau finally reached manhood, which may have made loathing problematic. Ambivalent emotions are always so difficult to juggle.
###
Oh, but there were so, so many awful things that happened in sunshine-y, bright and vacuous Orange County.
That whole Karl saga.
How did Karl end up dead with a bullet through his head at the age of—what was it? Thirteen?
Karl was Beau’s best friend.
And then Bill and MaryAnn kept bouncing Beau in and out of rehabs.
So weird since when Madeline and Isabella hit their teens, Bill and MaryAnn turned a blind eye to their drug use. In fact, Bill even grew their dope.
Oh, I can’t even type anymore.
Poor Beau. Poor, poor, poor Beau.
I don’t even know what to pray for.
Would it be better for Beau if he lived or if he died at this point?
I don’t even know.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 07:02 pm (UTC)Beau’s in his mid-30s now.
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Date: 2020-08-07 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-08 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 04:58 pm (UTC)