Magnificent Melanie, episodes 4, 5 & 6

 

(This is a continuing work in progress.) 

EPISODE 4 

On New Year’s Day, 1978, 16-year-old Melanie Robinson proclaimed at a family party just after midnight, “1978 is going to be my year! Something tells me it’s going to be a great year for me!” She tended to be optimistic by nature, but she also had her first glass of champagne that night. (Her brother Mark offered her a hit off a joint, but she turned that down.) Many years later, she still looked back fondly on 1978.

Jimmy Carter was president, but she didn’t care much about politics at that age. She didn’t even know who her parents voted for. They didn’t talk openly about such things. The most she knew about President Carter was that he had something to do with peanuts, he had a young daughter named Amy and his brother Billy liked to drink beer. Her parents also had different religious backgrounds so she wasn’t raised in any religion but she was open to different views, willing to accept the occasional invitation to someone’s church. 

It was the era of disco, and she liked the disco music she heard on the radio and thought the features she saw on TV about the disco scene and the excerpts from “Saturday Night Fever” looked like fun, but as a high school junior, she was too young to get into any of the discos in the city, at least without a fake I.D. And she wasn’t inclined to get one of those.

The all-American suburban teenage life in 1978 was an entirely different world than it would be decades later, and it wasn’t just the popularity of disco. Kids that age were encouraged to grow up and become independent young adults. One got their learner’s permit at 15, driver’s license at 16 and perhaps saved enough money from various jobs to purchase a rusty but still-running used car, offering some autonomy from home. Gasoline was around 65.9 cents a gallon and climbing, and was not considered cheap. 

Age 18 meant adulthood and one was expected to either go to college, join the military (at least the draft had ended with the Vietnam War) or get a job and move out. Drinking ages were 18 or 19 in most states, smoking was commonplace among the population as a whole, and while 18 was the legal age to buy cigarettes, many younger teens had no problem getting them and picked up the habit, while society at large barely batted an eye, except maybe to point out the health hazards that were becoming more widely known.

The high school setting had all the stereotypes; jocks, nerds, geeks, burnouts, brains, popular types, loser types, goodie-goodies and everything else, but who they really were as individuals wasn’t all that clear when one got down to it.

Melanie generally had a mature attitude about things. She wasn’t always a straight-A student, she did better in some subjects than in others, but she tried her hardest and took pride in what she could accomplish. If she got into trouble for anything, it was talking or laughing in class. She liked to say "shut up" a lot, but it was always in jest, never out of disrespect (and certainly never in class). She liked boys and she liked to flirt and was considered “cute,” but she had a problem with guys who got too pushy or demanding with her.

She’d tactfully discourage guys who went beyond her comfort level by saying “Down, boy” like she was talking to an amorous dog, but one guy who crossed a line with her in the school hallway got slapped.

She was usually too busy babysitting to date anyway, and that was fine with her. She knew of girls her age and even younger who became pregnant and she figured she’d rather babysit other people’s kids, make a little money and stay out of trouble. 

She had been babysitting since she was 12 years old and she was popular with both kids and their parents and was in high demand. To them, she was “Magnificent Melanie.” She chaperoned a few birthday and slumber parties and outings. Sometimes she was even recognized for making a difference. One afternoon, her guidance counselor Mrs. Schuster called Melanie to her office.

“I thought you might like to know that I was talking to Mrs. Horton, a fifth grade teacher in the elementary school, and she noticed one of her students, a girl named Becky, was taking much more interest in reading lately. Becky told Mrs. Horton that it was her babysitter Melanie who encouraged her,” the guidance counselor told her.

Melanie was a bit taken aback by that, initially just saying, “Oh wow, really?” She thought for a moment and explained, “She loves the Little House on the Prairie TV show. When I was her age I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and loved those, and I just told her about how the books are a bit different from the TV show, and started bringing some of mine over and reading excerpts to her. She started asking if she could borrow them and she really enjoyed them. Now I’m getting her into Nancy Drew, and those books are by far better than the TV show!”

Melanie was particularly close to her Grandma Dolores. From the time Melanie was a chatty, inquisitive toddler, Grandma Dolores took a special interest in her youngest grandchild, teaching her arts and crafts and encouraging creativity, which Melanie in turn passed on to the kids she babysat.

Dolores wore a heart pendant necklace similar to the one worn by Arlene Frances, whom she admired, on TV panel shows. On her 13^th birthday, Dolores gave Melanie a smaller and more fashionable heart necklace because “you’re a teenager now.” It was one of Melanie’s most prized possessions. She also introduced Melanie to the joys of coffee and soap operas.

Dolores was a factory worker during World War II and Melanie was fascinated with her stories of life on the home front during that time, as well as her memories of her childhood in the ‘20s and of the Great Depression. The knowledge she gained from her grandmother’s stories helped her a lot in her history classes, where she tended to do well.

In spite of her Pollyannaish reputation, Melanie did smoke, at least socially. “It proves to everyone that I’m not Little Miss Perfect,” she’d reply if anyone commented about it. But she did feel more self-confident in social situations when she smoked, so it was something of a crutch. Most of her friends and family members smoked and she wasn’t exactly discouraged from doing it. Parents she babysat for thought she was "mature" and openly invited her to smoke, and her Grandma Dolores even gave her pointers on doing it “more lady-like.”

One time when she was smoking with her friends Wendy and Tami, Tami observed the “lady-like” way she was doing it and commented sarcastically, “God, Melanie, are you trying to give it a blow job or something?” which made Melanie bust out laughing, causing her to inhale wrong, and sending her into a coughing fit with tears coming down her cheeks.

She was aware of the lingering odor and when it was convenient she’d wash up and add a spray of Love’s Baby Soft or a dab of Daisy L that she kept in her purse, and would also refresh her lip gloss. “I don’t think I’ll get addicted because I don’t have an addictive personality,” she’d insist, but worried, “If I quit I’ll probably gain weight and I don’t want to do that.” (She eventually did quit and in later years spoke to youth groups about the hazards of smoking and the marketing tactics of Big Tobacco, but that’s a whole other story.)

EPISODE 5

Everyone from her classmates to her guidance councilor Mrs. Schuster wondered why she was so enthralled with a tenth grader named Jason Lundgren. Schuster met with him a couple of times (not for anything having to do with Melanie) and she was not impressed with him (and the feeling was mutual). He was indifferent about school and he saw nothing special about authority figures. He would challenge teachers and rules, and would get sent to the principal's office and to detention. In detention, he'd take the opportunity to draw "underground comics" in his notebook and pass them around to his friends.

One thing he knew, he was only there because he had to be. But in spite of his aversion to the restrictive school environment, he was actually quite intelligent. He had a lot of knowledge of the things that interested him. A couple of his teachers saw that in him and were frustrated that he didn’t apply himself more to what they were teaching. The others just wrote him off as a smartass or a class clown or a troublemaker with a hopelessly bad attitude. “He’ll never amount to anything,” they told themselves.

Jason had dark blond scraggly hair and gray-blue eyes with a little bit of fuzz growing above his lip, and he always wore blue jeans, sneakers and T-shirts usually advertising something, like radio stations, gas stations, pop, beer, things like that. And he wasn’t really a troublemaker. In his spare time, he wasn’t breaking windows or stealing hubcaps, he was often just in his room playing his rock ‘n’ roll records, thinking and imagining. He tried to avoid fights but was willing to scrap when attacked. He was something of an introvert but he had a few friends and associates that he hung out with.

In spite of the rebellious “too cool for school” attitude, he didn’t smoke. “I don’t see what’s so ‘rebellious’ about doing something our parents, grandparents and all their friends do,” he’d say. "And besides, it smells like shit." He liked to drink beer when he had the opportunity, though, just like his parents, grandparents and all their friends. And just as cigarettes were becoming Melanie's social crutch, beer was becoming Jason's social crutch.

Melanie became aware of Jason long before he was aware of her. She first noticed him when they were in the same lunch period during first semester of the school year. He’d always bring a small bottle of hot sauce “to spice up the shitty food they have here,” and he had a group of friends that he sat with, all dudes, and he kept them entertained with his commentary and comedy, which would range from rants about how much school “sucks,” which Melanie didn’t think much of, to some tongue-in-cheek bits that she found amusing.

In one such bit, he held up a soda pop can he had just purchased for 35 cents from the school vending machine. “It says ‘Canada Dry Tahitian Treat.’ Nowhere on the can does it say it’s a product of Canada or Tahiti. It says it’s a product of Chicago. What’s up with that?” He then held up a Danish roll in a printed cellophane wrapper. “And why do they call this a Danish roll? It says ‘Product of USA,’ not ‘Product of Denmark.’”

He would also entertain his small audience with imitations of Gong Show host Chuck Barris and comedian Rodney Dangerfield (from material out of a Rodney Dangerfield joke book he had picked up for $1.75). He would tug on his T-shirt the way Rodney tugged on his tie and say, “It’s the story of my life, no respect.” Melanie would "tune in" to him, finding his lunchroom antics more amusing than the typical schoolgirl conversation and gossip going on at her table.

He also came up with an alter-ego he called Tony Davinni, which was based mostly on stereotypes he saw on TV shows. He’d speak in a working class New York City accent, swaggering and moving his hands around, saying, “I’m Tony Davinni, I’m an Italian Jew from New York, okay? My dad’s Italian, my muthah’s Jewish and I’m from New York. Ya got a problem wit dat or sumptin’?”

That bit made Melanie totally lose it. The girls at her table looked at her puzzled, saying, “God, Melanie, what is so funny?”

One way to Melanie’s heart was to make her laugh, and for whatever reason, she found him hilarious.

At that time, she was not aware that Jason was her classmate Tami’s younger brother, as they were relative newcomers to the district. When the semester came to an end, Melanie was assigned to a different lunch period from Jason, and that might have been the end of it. But then on a Saturday afternoon in early ’78, Melanie decided to go with her friends to Tami’s house, where she was surprised to see Jason sitting in the living room, watching TV. Melanie was convinced it was fate.

She was further convinced when she came over later on, ostensibly to be with her girlfriends, and visited with him when he was in his room playing records. She too liked popular music and collected records, but he seemed to know everything about the songs and the artists with trivia that he could just rattle off. She also got to see his “world,” with posters, road signs and a beer can collection along the walls, plus other artifacts he collected that he could tell her all about. She became fascinated with him, rough edges and all. 

His sister Tami thought it was "strange" but conceded, however sarcastically, "You deserve each other." (One of the things Melanie realized was both Tami and Jason had similar sarcastic senses of humor.) When Melanie asked her best friend and occasional protector Wendy what she thought, Wendy told her, "If I had a problem with him, you'd know it. And so would he!"   

Jason was quite happy to get this unexpected attention from an attractive girl who was a little older than him, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. The girls his own age had no interest in him, finding him too “weird” or just too cynical and off-putting. He wasn't looking for a girlfriend anyway, finding the whole "Establishment teen dating scene" something repulsive that he wanted no part of. She wasn’t really looking for a boyfriend herself (or was she?), and so they found each other. He slowly grew to trust her as the one girl who actually seemed to ‘get’ him, at least a little bit.

There were a couple of current radio hits that made him think of her. “Ebony Eyes” by Bob Welch, because she had rather striking brown eyes, and “Count on Me” by Jefferson Starship, as that song was playing the one time they went to Pizza Hut together. Although he was too shy to tell her that, he did bring the song up to her in a roundabout way by telling her, “The lead singer and composer is Marty Balin. Interestingly, he got the shit beaten out of him on stage by the Hell’s Angels in 1969 when Jefferson Airplane performed at the infamous Altamont Free Concert…” He was trying to impress her with his knowledge of trivia, but she really would have liked it if he just told her the song made him think of her. 

They both loved “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” by Electric Light Orchestra, and would sing the line “Insufficient data comin’ through” together when they heard it on the radio. Then there was "Jungle Love" by the Steve Miller Band.

"When I first heard this, I thought he was singing 'Chug-A-Lug is driving me mad and making me crazy,'" Jason admitted to her.

Once again, Melanie completely lost it. "Oh my god! So did I! In fact Tami told me it was 'Jungle Love' and thought I was such a doofus." 

She wasn’t that much older than him but they say girls mature faster than boys, and if he could be a little immature at times, she was okay with it. After all, she had been babysitting immature boys since she was 12 years old, and learned early on she needed to have a great sense of humor. But she really did not want to be his babysitter. She had somewhat higher expectations of him.

He could be opinionated and sometimes she’d challenge him. One example was his affinity for the late 1960s that she didn’t entirety get. She liked the music and some of the cultural stuff she recalled from her childhood memories, but he seemed to romanticize the whole anti-establishment, youth rebellion thing of a decade earlier that seemed to have faded in a few short years. From her late 1970s perspective she could understand ‘50s nostalgia, but ‘60s nostalgia?

“People don’t give a shit about anything anymore, except ‘boogying down’ and all that crap,” Jason told her. “I’ve heard stories that there were several student protests at our high school back in 1969 and ’70 that even involved confrontations with the police! Do you remember that?”

“Hmm, no,” Melanie replied. “Let’s see, in 1969 or ’70 I was 8 or 9 years old and Wendy and I were probably playing with Barbies and listening to Bobby Sherman records. What were you doing, burning your draft card and getting the crap beaten out of you by riot police?”

“Yeah, I wish,” Jason retorted.

“Why would you wish that,” Melanie asked him incredulously. “At least you don't have to worry about being drafted and sent to Vietnam like my uncle and Wendy’s older brother were.”

Other times, if he was saying something particularly nasty about someone, such as a teacher or counselor she happened to like, she'd just say, "Be nice, Jason."  

EPISODE 6

When June 1978 rolled around, school was out for the summer. Come September, Melanie would begin her senior year in high school, followed by a future she hadn’t yet decided on. In the meantime, she took on a new babysitting job for a 9-year-old son of a divorced mother, which would keep her busy most weekdays.

Jason was a little disappointed. He was hoping he’d get to hang out with her all summer. She promised him that they’d get to hang out together on days when she wasn’t so busy, and finally, about two weeks into summer vacation, she suggested they should meet up for lunch at the Burger Chef on Annandale Boulevard.

Over burgers, fries and soft drinks in paper cups with plastic straws, she told him about her new babysitting job.

“Basically he’s either at baseball practice or out running around with his friends. I make his lunch, make Kool-Aid and make sure he stays out of trouble. Otherwise I can drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and watch ‘Ryan’s Hope’ and ‘All My Children’ every day, just like a real mom,” she said somewhat jokingly.

“Hmm, do you smack him around like a real mom,” Jason asked sarcastically.

“No. First of all, he’s not a bad kid at all. He’s really well behaved. But I don’t hit. Even if I’m told I can do it, I don’t feel it’s my place as a babysitter and I try to handle situations like that with more positive redirection.”

“Yeah, but you hit me all the time,” Jason retorted.

“Shut up, I do not,” Melanie exclaimed as she slapped his arm. Jason laughed. “Really, the only time I ever seriously hit someone was Troy Frischman in school when he cornered me by the lockers and grabbed me.”

Jason busted out laughing. “That dickhead? God, I hate him. So he grabbed your ass or something?”

“NO! He grabbed me here,” she told him, gesturing toward her left breast. “I just hauled off and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. He was kind of stunned and I was able to get away from him. He called me an effing bitch or something, but whatever. Somebody told me I might get into trouble because he’s such a hotshot jock or whatever, and he’s a senior, but nothing was made of it. Mister Big Stuff wasn’t going to tattle on the five-foot-two girl who slapped him across the face.”

“Hooooly shit! Wow!” Jason exclaimed.

Melanie smiled. “Don’t mess with Magnificent Melanie. I can be feisty when I need to be.”

“Wow, yeah, I guess so. Was this before or after we met?”

“Um…it was last fall, so it would have been before. We met in January, although I already sort of knew who you were,” Melanie told him, explaining how they were in the same lunch period during first semester and how much she enjoyed his lunchroom antics such as his commentaries and celebrity impersonations.

“I used to do a great Woody Woodpecker until my voice changed when I was 13,” Jason told her.

Melanie laughed. “The funniest character you did was the ‘Italian Jew from New York.’”

Jason slipped into the character. “Oh yeah,” he said in the New York accent, moving his hands and shoulders around. “Tony Davinni. My dad’s Italian, my muthah’s Jewish and I’m from New York, okay? You got a problem with dat or somptin’?”

Melanie busted out laughing again, then said, “What’s funny is I happen to have both Italian and Jewish heritage. I’m not from New York, though.”

“Oh…shit…” he said, thinking he just stepped into a major controversy.

Melanie grabbed his hands. “No, it’s totally cool! I mean, it’s like there’s something almost cosmic about it, like you somehow knew something about me before we knew each other. Not that I believe in astrology or fortune telling or anything like that, but certain things are too weird to be coincidence.”

After some laughs and a hug from this nice, Italian-Jewish girl, Jason suggested that her surname Robinson didn’t sound like any of those ethnicities.

“I’m Italian from the Fellini side, not the Robinson side. The Robinsons tend to be blue-eyed blonds and I’m a brown-eyed brunette and so are my siblings. My Grandma Dolores is Jewish but she married a Gentile. So basically I’m a mutt,” she explained.

As Melanie and Jason finished eating, they got up, tossed all their trash into the trash can, stacked their plastic trays on top and walked out of the Burger Chef. Pointing to a store up the street, Melanie said, “Oh, let’s check out Waterbed Concepts. I love looking at waterbeds.”

Jason said okay and she grabbed his hand as they walked over there. “We could pretend we’re a young couple thinking about buying one and see what they say,” she suggested, adding, “just as a put-on.”

“O…kay,” a skeptical Jason responded, wondering where this was going.

Waterbed Concepts had its own unique atmosphere. In addition to waterbeds spread out in bedroom-like settings throughout the store, there were plants galore, colorful walls, lighting that conveyed a “mood,” a stereo system playing an FM “mellow rock” station and a subtle aroma of sandalwood incense in the air. The store also sold furnishings, bedspreads, accessories and other stuff. A young salesman with a mustache and a wide tie greeted them.

Melanie, pretending to be a prospective customer with her fiancée, said “Hi. We’re thinking about getting a waterbed. We’re not ready to buy yet, at least not until we’re married, if that’s okay? But we just want to look at a few as we consider our decision.”

Jason said under his breath, “Oh my god…” and chuckled a bit uncomfortably, and Melanie elbowed him.

“Not a problem at all,” the salesman assured her. “First of all, two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleep.” Melanie giggled. The salesman then went into his sales pitch about the bed they happened to be standing near and the one next to that.  

“Oh, this one’s really pretty,” Melanie said as she sat down on one of them and invited Jason to do the same. The bed made waves as the “couple” bounced on it.

“Can we see what it’s like to lay down on it?” Melanie asked the salesman.

“Sure. Just remove your shoes first, please.” Melanie and Jason took off their shoes and piled them together next to the bed. Melanie took Jason’s arm, bringing him with her as she lay down. The salesman told her he’d be back as he went to tend to another customer. “Fantasy” by Earth, Wind & Fire was playing over the stereo system.

“Earth, Wind & Fire. I get them confused with Blood, Sweat & Tears,” Jason commented. “I wonder if they ever toured together…”

Melanie briefly rolled her eyes and said softly, “Shut up, Jason,” as she put her mouth on his to shut him up.

Our voices will ring together
Until the 12th of never
We all will live love forever, as one

It seemed like an hour went quickly by but it was only about 90 seconds or so before the mildly amused salesman returned.

“I see you really like this model,” he remarked.

Melanie and Jason quickly sat up. Melanie was laughing and red-faced, while Jason muttered, “Oh shit…”

Melanie kept up the façade as they put their shoes back on. “Yes, this one’s really nice. But as I say, we’re not ready to buy quite yet, as there are a lot of things to consider…”

“I certainly understand,” the salesman assured. “When you’re ready to make the purchase, we do accept Visa and Master Charge.”

“Visa used to be Bank Americard, right?” Jason asked. Melanie slapped his arm.

“Yes. If you still have a Bank Americard that hasn’t yet expired, we’ll still accept that as well,” the salesman assured.

“Do you give S&H Green Stamps?” Jason asked. Melanie laughed, and then slapped him again.

“No, sorry we do not,” the salesman said.

“Thank you,” Melanie exclaimed as she and Jason shook his hand.

“Hope to see you again,” the salesman said. 

As they exited Waterbed Concepts, Melanie, having refrained from it all afternoon, reached into her purse and said, “I’m sorry, but I need a cigarette, like, right now!”

Magnificent Melanie, episode 1

Kathy and the Kid

 

Follow along with the audio book version, voiced by Mei Young, on YouTube.  

It was March 1986. Kathy Johnson had just moved in to a small but comfortable unit in the Manor Royale apartment complex. At age 22, her marriage to "Mister Wonderful" had fallen apart. When she couldn't take the drinking, verbal abuse, controlling and running around by her husband anymore, she packed as much as she could into her small car and left, getting away as far as she could. They had no children, so it was easy enough to break away.

     As she slowly got settled in, she had lots of mixed emotions. She was now completely alone. She didn't miss her estranged husband too much, and she liked being able to finally do things for herself and make her own decisions, but she was also lonely. She didn't really know anybody in the city she moved to, and she wasn't ready to start dating again. She landed a second shift job at a factory doing light assembly and packing boxes, which kept the bills paid, but it was a rather dark, depressing, restrictive work environment where the people weren't particularly friendly. She wasn't Kathy, she was Employee #2281.

     She would get home at around 11:30 at night, watch some late night TV for a few hours, go to bed, get up again the next day and if she didn't have to go grocery shopping or run some other errand, she'd sit in her apartment, watch TV, sip black coffee, eat, and smoke cigarettes. Lots of them. Then, later in the day, go back to work at her less than thrilling job.

     There were a lot of kids at the Manor Royale apartments where she lived. Some were from in-tact families but a lot of them were from divorced or otherwise single parent households. Like 12-year-old Jacob Petersen, who lived with his mother a couple floors down.

     Technically he was living with his mother but in the grand scheme of things he was fending for himself because she wasn't home very often. She got up early for work and came home late, and she had a social life too. But Jacob was rather mature and responsible for his age, and could get up, get dressed and get to school on time, and then come home and heat up his own frozen dinners in the oven. He had a few friends that he sometimes hung out with after school, and for the most part they stayed out of trouble. A big motivation for Jacob to stay out of trouble was to prove to his mother he didn't need a stinkin' babysitter at age 12.

     Kathy started to notice Jacob a lot when summer came, and school was out. Sometimes he and his friends were coming and going in and out of each other's apartments or roaming up and down the halls or doing something outside, but a lot of times Jacob was by himself, especially during the day on weekdays, because his friends had other activities going on.

     Kathy knew nothing about the kid, but she wondered about him. She sensed he was neglected and maybe as lonely as she was. Seeing him around stirred some maternal feelings in her, thinking about how nice it would be to have a son or daughter and how she would be a much more loving, nurturing parent to this kid than his own mother apparently was. She found herself thinking about him while engaged in her tedious, redundant tasks at work.

     Finally, when she saw him late one morning hitch-hiking on Highway 612 about a half-mile from the apartments, she hit her breaks.

     "Get in here! Now!" she ordered.

     "Okay," the kid said with a relieved smile as he opened the door and went into the front passenger seat. But Kathy only pulled up a little further to the side of the road while traffic zoomed by.

     "Just what do you think you're doing," she demanded.

     "I'm just trying to get home,” Jacob said. “I live at the Manor Royale apartments. They're just over…"

     "I know where you live,” Kathy interrupted. “I see you around there all the time. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to hitch-hike? Any idea?! You could be hit by a car, or, you don't know who's going to pick you up, or where they're going to take you or what they might do to you. You could be kidnapped, you could be slaughtered or who knows what could happen to you!" She pulled a Benson & Hedges cigarette from her purse and lit up.

     "Sorry!" the kid said.

     Kathy took the cigarette from her mouth and exhaled. "Oh, you're sorry. Is that all you have to say? If you were my kid you'd be getting a spanking from me and I don't care how old you are!"

     She shifted the car into drive and got back on the highway. "So, is your mom home right now? Or do you even have a mom?" Kathy's voice dripped with sarcasm as she asked this.

     "My mom is working. She won't be home 'til at least six."

     "Oh, of course. Why am I not surprised?"

     After about a minute, Kathy finally started to calm down. "I'm Kathy, by the way. What is your name?"

     "Jacob."

     "Have you had lunch yet, Jacob?"

     "Not really…"

     "I'll tell you what. I'll make you lunch. Do you like grilled cheese?"

     "Sure."

     "Good. So do I."

     It was coming up on noon when Kathy brought Jacob up to her apartment. She fixed him and herself a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, and while he wasn't real talkative, she got him to open up a little.

     "So are your parents divorced?" she asked him.

     "Yeah, for about three years. I was nine, I guess. I don't see my dad much at all anymore, and my mom works and goes out a lot and stuff. But I can take care of myself," he told her.

     "Well, I'm sure divorce can be pretty hard on a kid,” she replied. My parents are still together but I'm in the process of getting a divorce. I'm glad I don't have kids because of the circumstances, but I also wish I had kids, if that makes any sense?"

     "So why are you getting divorced?"

      "My husband is such a turd," she laughed. "He would tell me he loves me so much, then he would come home drunk and start screaming at me about what a stupid bitch I am, how I don't satisfy his desires as much as I should and I'm just so lucky he married me. Then he'd go sleep with some co-worker or pick up some chicky-babe in a bar. He could be mean, he could be sarcastic, but he could also be charming, and I fell for it. Well I hope he's happy now!"

     She finished her glass of milk and lit a cigarette. "He also got me smoking. I never smoked until after I started dating him when I was 19. I was always one of the good girls in high school who didn’t smoke."

     All Jacob could say was "Wow." She had gone from talking to him like a child when she picked him up, to talking to him as if he were another adult. But she was desperate for someone to talk to and confide in, and Jacob was pretty mature for his age.

     Jacob in turn told her about his life, his friends, and his mother who wasn't around all that much, either working or going out and sometimes coming home drunk. He then said facetiously, "I wonder if my mom has met your husband."

     Kathy laughed. "Well she can have him! I would gladly trade him for you. If you were my kid, I would put you first in my life, and love you, and take care of you and be there for you."

     They continued to talk until Kathy glanced at the clock on the wall. "Oh my God! I'm going to have to get ready for work right now or I'm going to be late. Thank you so much for talking to me, Jacob. I've really enjoyed this."

     She walked him to the door. "I work evenings but I'm usually home during the day. So if you want somebody to talk to, I'm here for you." She hugged him, and then looked him in the eye. "And don't you dare ever hitch-hike again!"

     It would be another week before Jacob took Kathy up in her offer to visit her, but they did say hi to each other when they saw each other in and around the apartment complex. On one occasion, she greeted Jacob while he was hanging with a couple of his friends.

     "Stop by and see me some time," Kathy said as she walked off.

     "Who was that?" his stunned friend Joel asked. "She's nice!"

     "Oh, just the lady in 308," Jacob replied.

     The next day, a little after 10:30 in the morning, Jacob came up to 308. Kathy invited him in and gave him a hug, and a kiss on the forehead. They sat in the living room and talked, and then Jacob asked with some trepidation, "Can I sit with you, Kathy?"

     Kathy's eyes widened. "Well of course." She patted the spot next to her on the couch. "Come over here."

     Jacob found that Kathy was willing to give him something he was lacking in his life and didn't realize he craved, and that was physical affection. His mother was not a particularly affectionate person and tended to push him away when he was younger and tried to get close to her. Kathy was very touchy-feely and was craving it herself.

     As summer rolled on, Kathy and Jacob were spending more time together. She would make him lunch, or at least a snack, and they would spend a few hours together in the air-conditioned comfort of her apartment unit during the hot, humid summer. They cuddled together on the couch, sometimes rocking back and forth like a mother and baby, or he would lay his head in her lap while she read a paperback or watched TV or talked on the phone, with her free hand stroking his chest. Sometimes she’d lean over and give him a kiss.

     When she would talk on the phone to her mother or friends from the old neighborhood while Jacob was with her, they commented that she sounded more relaxed and contented than she had been for a long time. She would just say that things were getting better and she was meeting new friends, without elaborating.

     Then around late August, Kathy casually mentioned to Jacob that her soon-to-be-ex husband got her number and was starting to call her. "He wants to have dinner with me," she said. "I'm not really crazy about it. But I don't know. Maybe I should just meet up with him once to hash things out as the divorce becomes final."

     Jacob thought that sounded a little fishy, but as negative as she was about her husband, he assumed that would indeed be the extent of it.

     Then, after a while, Kathy didn't seem to be at home as much. Jacob would knock on her door or call her only to get no answer, or if she did answer, she never had much time.

     Finally one day, she invited him over. He came to her apartment to find much of her belongings boxed up. It was obvious she was getting ready to move.

     "I'm getting back together with my husband," she said enthusiastically. "Isn't that great?"

     Jacob was stunned. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Why? I thought you said your husband was a big turd. That he was mean to you and liked to get drunk…"

     "He promised he would change for me because he really does love me, and that's all that matters. I have to change for him too, that's the deal, but he said he loves me!"

     "Well…" Jacob said, and then paused to collect his thoughts. "Can I have your new number so we can still talk? Or your address so we can write to each other. I love to write letters…"

     "No, I don't think that's going to work out," she told him. "I mentioned you to him, and he wasn't too happy about you coming over, even if you are only 12. He says it's another one of my dumb ideas that I need to stop, and I guess he's sort of right."

     Jacob felt like he had just been punched in the gut. "I'm a dumb idea?!"

     "I didn't say that, Jacob."

     "Going back to your husband is a dumb idea, Kathy. A stupid idea! Why are you doing this?"

     "Well I'm sorry you feel that way," Kathy responded. She lit a cigarette as she tried to mask her own feelings. "Anyway, I'm going to have to let you go now. I need to finish packing," she said.

     She walked him to the door and gave him a brisk hug. "Bye, Jacob. It's been fun." She pushed him out the door and locked it behind him.

     A few days later, the unit where Kathy dwelled for six months became available for rent again, even though she had to pay a rather high fee for breaking her lease. Her renewed relationship with her husband only lasted a few months until she moved out again, and moved in with a new boyfriend. A few years later, with a different boyfriend, she became pregnant and nine months later gave birth to a son. She named him Jacob.

Love, Crystal

Theme song: "The Dangerous Type" by the Cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQicIvb_9pc

Crystal worked part time at the Kinko's Copy Center. Back in the 1990s, stores with self-service photocopy machines were quite useful to those of us who didn’t have such fancy equipment in our home offices as scanners attached to personal computers. So I was a regular customer there, photocopying and enlarging pictures, copying and pasting stuff by hand for various projects and printing it up.

Crystal was always very helpful and friendly. She had an infectious smile and a great laugh, and she seemed to appreciate my sense of humor. She was twenty years old at the time I met her. She had a pretty easy-going personality, she was petite, with green eyes and thick, sandy-blonde hair with bangs, often times tied back in an elastic ponytail holder that was otherwise worn on her wrist, leaving her hair cascading around her shoulders.

As we were getting to know each other, I found I was starting to like her. When she wasn’t too busy with customers I’d wind up hanging around and chatting with her. Soon, I was finding excuses to do something at Kinko’s as often as I could, and would occasionally be disappointed if she wasn’t there because it was her day off.

As it turned out, she sort of liked me too. Over time we began meeting at a nearby Starbuck's coffee shop after her shift. It so happened she lived right by me, in a house with her brother David and sister-in-law Annie. Before long I found myself going to her house after work, on the evenings that she wasn’t working.

When we exchanged phone numbers, we would sometimes wind up talking on the phone for hours. Sometimes it was about the crazy people she would encounter at her work but often times it was about our lives’ ideals and dreams.

“My mom and step-dad threw me out of the house when I was eighteen,” she told me. “My step-dad is such a prick. He said I was a spoiled little princess who needed to be thrown out on my royal little ass. And my mom isn’t much better. She just basically agrees with whatever he says. So they made arrangements to move me in with my brother and his wife, and then they move to Florida! Just to make it hard for me to move back in with them. I mean, it was totally unfair. And my real dad hasn’t been in the picture at all since I was, like, eight.”

I was a few years older and as I got to know her a little more, she did strike me as immature at times. She complained a lot about her brother David and his wife Annie, who owned the house in which she lived. They were in their thirties, career people, having her as a border. I thought she had a good situation there, her own room, token rent payments, reign of the house and free meals. But she always found something to complain about. "They just want to control me. They expect me to pay them money out of my paycheck. They tell me to do this. They won't let me do that." Her complaints went on and on and on.

Overall, though, she just seemed like an all-around nice girl. She didn’t smoke, and she hated being around smokers. She’d sip a cocktail or a wine cooler but otherwise wasn’t much of a drinker. And she said she never had a serious boyfriend because, “I don’t need the drama. I get enough drama from David and Annie, and my parents, and my girlfriends and their boyfriends.”

“What I like about you,” she told me, “is you’re not all about drama. You’re more level-headed and intelligent than basically anyone I know.”

David and Annie were always cordial when I came over. David would offer me a can of beer and Annie would offer a snack from the kitchen.

“It’s good to see Crystal finally has a boyfriend,” David remarked to me the first time I came over.

“He’s just a friend, not a boyfriend,” Crystal retorted.

“No, it’s okay. Take her off our hands. We won’t mind,” David said to me with a laugh, but I sensed he might not have entirely been joking.

I was never really romantically involved with Crystal. I was kind of smitten with her, but we were mostly just pals. I might get a hug or a kiss on the cheek from her but that was as far as it went. I'd go to her house and have a few beers or we'd watch TV together. I'd reluctantly sit through Melrose Place, which took several beers to make that tolerable, but we both liked The Simpsons. There wasn't that much age difference between us but it sometimes seemed we were a generation apart. I liked watching news and intelligent talk shows and she liked watching that prime-time crap. She had no clue who Dick Cavett or Tom Snyder even were. I was also a big Frank Zappa head but she couldn't understand anything beyond top-10 hits. But we connected in a lot of other ways and that was a neat thing.

She knew I was a writer and we often sat in her room, door closed, and she'd show me notebooks of poetry and stories she was working on, asking my opinion. It amused me what a stereotypical "girls' room" she had, complete with a canopy bed and stuffed animals.

After an hour or two of sitting in her room, we'd occasionally walk to a nearby bagel place for something to eat. The closest I came to spending a night with her was when David and Annie were out of town for the weekend and we stayed up, watched late night movies and made omelets and Bloody Marys at one a.m.

In between visits we’d talk on the phone, and every so often she would send me a card in the mail, usually with a floral design on the cover and a quaint, hand-written message on the inside, such as, “Just wanted to let ya know I’m thinking of you!!! Love, Crystal,” with a smiley face drawn next to her name. I could even faintly smell her perfume on these cards.

Eventually Crystal's relationship with her brother and sister-in-law hit the skids. She could be a spoiled brat sometimes and they finally got fed up and told her to move out by the end of the month.

She called me, very angry and teary, when that happened. "How can they do this to me," she whined. "I'm family and they're betraying me. I'm going to kill them. I swear I'm going to kill them!"

I told her to "relax, take it easy. There are plenty of places you can move to and you won't have to deal with them anymore."

"I won't have to deal with them if I kill them."

I began to get irritated with her. "Will you quit with that, Crystal. You're being ridiculous."

"Fine!" she snapped.

After an intense few seconds, we moved the conversation to other things.

A couple days later she invited me over. David and Annie were there so I assumed she got things patched up with them. We sat in the living room and talked and things seemed normal when she abruptly said "Hold on, I gotta do something."

Annie was in the kitchen getting something to eat. Crystal came up behind her with this big hammer, the kind used to bust up rocks when BAM! She slammed it against Annie's head. Annie fell forward, she was out cold.

It was so surreal, I felt like I was only watching a movie or something. My first thought was simply "Wow, she's really going through with it."

David heard the commotion and came running downstairs to investigate when BAM! She knocked him down as well.

I was now stunned, not knowing what to do, not sure if I would be next and certainly afraid to touch anything. She just smiled as she looked at me and said, "Well, I suppose I might as well make sure they're really dead." She casually put down the hammer and pulled a couple of rags from the drawer in the kitchen, tying one around her brother's neck tight enough to strangle him. She went to do the same thing to Annie.

"Oh ick! She's bleeding!" She lifted Annie's head to fit the noose around her. "Eeew! She's bleeding through her nose. Gross!" The blood actually bothered her more than her own violent method of murder. It was surreal.

She then went upstairs and came back down with her diary and some notebooks. "I need to burn these things," she said, putting them in the fireplace and lighting them up.

Finally I said, "I better go. This is getting too bizarre for me."

"Okay. Maybe I'll call you this weekend. Bye, Sweetie," she said.

I couldn't believe how casual she was acting, as if nothing major happened. I used my shirt to handle the doorknob on the way out. I wanted my fingerprints on as few things as possible.

I got home and I was in such a daze. I figured the right thing to do would be to call the police but I didn't want to snitch on a friend. She was, after all, always nice to me. But I realized that I was a witness to murder and it was my duty to come forward. I could be considered a suspect and she could even try to pin it on me.

But my friend actually spared me of that. She turned herself in and she eventually pled guilty. She later told me she cared about me enough to not want me involved in the mess. So why in the hell did she commit her crime in front of me then?!

Crystal was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. There is no death penalty here, though there was no shortage of pundits and other media blowhards calling for it when this case came to light. I couldn't bear to see her, this pretty, thinking, feeling, warm human being strapped down, stripped of every bit of dignity as she's killed by government officials in an institutionalized setting.

I haven't seen Crystal since she went to prison. They sent her up to this remote maximum security place that is hard to get to, although we do write to each other regularly. She signs her letters with a heart and smile face. How cute for a cold-blooded murderer.

She recently sent me a photo of her in her skirted prison uniform and that great smile. She signed it, "Love, Crystal," with a smiley face.

God, I miss her.