Handle With Care
Two
Ruthie Camden looked longingly at her mother's closed bedroom door. Maybe if she just went in there and talked to her everything would be all right. But she knew Lucy had tried that before she left and it hadn't done any good at all. If anything, it only made matters worse. The young woman sighed, and returned to her homework, trying to do as her mother did – put the ones she loved out of mind.
It never got any easier, growing up without a mother or sister to confide in. She had Simon, but a brother just wasn't the same. When her father died, he took everyone down, and for that, she hated him. Her mother would never be what she once was, and that, everyone knew and felt.
Didn't Annie understand that even though her husband, and love of her life, was gone, she still had children who needed her? Every night, Ruthie would lie in bed and wonder if her mother loved her anymore. She had heard tales of mothers abandoning their children, and Ruthie had felt sympathy for those kids. She just never thought it would happen to her.
Shoving her schoolwork aside, Ruthie vacated her seat on the couch and began a search for her most valuable possession: a book her mother had given to her years ago. She got down on her knees and reached under her bed, pulling out a square item. It was the baby book Annie had given her when she was feeling "motherless" when the twins were born. This was the only piece of her mother that she had left.
Cradling the album in her arms as if it were precious, Ruthie got to her feet and headed to her mother's room, stopping just at the door. Right when her hand had closed around the knob, Simon entered the apartment and gave her a look that chilled her bones.
"What did you do?" he asked, coming over to her. His eyes glanced between her and the entrance into Annie's "cave."
Quickly, Ruthie responded, "Nothing, I swear." Noticing her hand was still on handle, she retracted it as if it were burning with fire.
Simon continued his interrogation. "But you were going to do something, weren't you?" He pointed to her book. "What's that?"
She was about to defend herself, when a certain smell caught her attention. After sniffing the air, Ruthie knew exactly what it was. Finding the tables were turning, she acted upon it.
Looking nonplussed, she asked, "Have you been smoking?"
Simon's reaction was slightly delayed as he tried to find an excuse. "No. I'm not an idiot."
Ruthie scoffed and raised an accusing eyebrow. "Yes, you are. You've done some pretty idiotic things in the past."
Realizing he couldn't win this argument, Simon pushed past his sister and began to walk away.
"You don't know anything," he called over his shoulder.
A few seconds later, Ruthie had followed him into the kitchen. Fire was blazing behind her eyes.
"I know more than you think I do," she stated. "I know enough to not smoke or lie. And unlike you, I know enough to respect and honor what dad taught us!"
Simon felt his jaw tighten. He jerked Ruthie's book from her hold. When he saw what it was, he scoffed. Throwing it back to her, he said, "You can keep on dreaming, Ruthie, but Mom is never coming back."
Looking like she wanted to spit at his feet, she said in a dangerously low voice, "You're wrong." Ruthie spun on her heels and disappeared into her room, slamming the door behind her.
"Have you heard from any of your brothers or sisters lately?" Carlos asked his wife as they were putting the kitchen back into order after dinner. He was busy washing dishes while Mary put food, among other things, away.
Mary shook her head as she closed a Tupperware container. "Not since Dad died," she replied shortly.
Carlos set a dish aside in the drainer. Plunging his hands into the sudsy water yet again, he grabbed a glass while studying Mary. Her expression gave nothing away.
"Aren't you worried about them?" he asked, running the washrag over the blue paint of the coffee mug. Mary's response was delayed, and he knew she was about to lie to him.
She sighed, beginning to get irritated. "Not really. Lucy's with them, and you know she's just like mom anyway."
Carlos pulled the plug at the bottom of the sink, and watched as the soapy water spiraled down the drain. Mary seemed to take on wiping down the table with a vengeance.
"You know," he said uneasily, "you haven't really talked about...anything relating to your dad since he died."
Angrily, Mary threw down the rag. "I can't have this conversation with you right now. I'm going to bed."
Carlos watched her leave, feeling sorry he had even opened his mouth in the first place.
Lucy Camden watched the ceiling as the man in bed next to her stirred while he woke. She expelled a breath of relief. God, it's about time, she thought.
Stretching, he turned to her, a cocky smile on his face. "Lucy," he drawled. "Last night was, um, beautiful – like you." He leaned toward her, expecting her to give him a passionate, fiery kiss, but instead he ran face-first into her flexed hand.
"Just shut up and give me money, or I will be sure to castrate you," she demanded, staring him coldly in the eye.
"Damn, can't you take a compliment?" he asked as he rummaged around in his nightstand drawer. A second later, he pulled out a fifty dollar bill. "Here."
Lucy snatched the cash out of his hands. After confirming that it was real, she pushed herself out of bed and gathered each article of her clothing from throughout the room. She was perfectly aware of his perverted eyes on her as she rescued her black bra from his dirty floor.
Just before she closed the door behind her, she called out to him over her shoulder, "Thanks for the workout."
Lucy Camden had been living in Dayton, Nevada now for almost one year exactly. Living without the money that her parents had supplied her with since she was a girl, was a challenge for Lucy, but she was getting by. Not in a way her parents would have approved of, but that wasn't important. It only mattered whether she was alive or not, and for now, she was alive.
She didn't know how long ago it was since she thought of her siblings. Truthfully, Lucy didn't worry about it much. It was best for her to leave them. They would have only slowed her down and given her gray hairs.
If her father could see her now, he wouldn't know her at all, she was so different. One thing she knew: he wouldn't approve of what she was doing or how she lived her life, day by day, not planning for the future. Had she been the old Lucy Camden, she would have cared what her parents thought of her, but now, she didn't give a rat's ass.
"Hey, can I bum a cigarette?" she asked a teenage boy who was standing on the corner smoking.
He looked her over, from her thickly lined eyes to her extremely short plaid skirt, and nodded anxiously. Quickly, he produced an extra cigarette and silver lighter from his pocket and handed them to her.
"Thanks," she said, tossing the lighter back to him. Lucy took a drag on her cigarette and expelled the smoke slowly in the boy's face. The woman, just weeks over twenty, left the boy coughing on the corner.