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008. sweater weather
HE HASN'T ALWAYS BEEN ANGRY.
Philosophers may disagree but the idea that nobody is born inherently evil is rooted deep in Lorraine Hopper's heart. Pete, her husband, she hated for what he'd done but loved for whom he'd been. Such conflict left her stuck in a very unusual relationship; unhappy most of the time, happy in others, but not unusual in the sense that she just wanted someone in a quite simple, desperate human way.
He was beautiful. Beautiful and young and mysterious and tortured. Lorraine's heart beat bashfully for the man saturated in moody tragedy, who always reeked of cigarettes, who swept the rich girl next door off her feet even before she found herself comfortable on the back of his motorcycle.
So she left everything behind. This human desire strangled her so badly, all she wanted was him, his realness. Little sheltered Lorraine wanted to see the world, to experience fullness, to be part of it, rather than a mere passing character, forever condemned to fade into the shadows of a socially acceptable life.
You'll be sorry, her father sneered at her, eyeing her bags with distaste. He'll break your heart.
After a while, it was always the little things. Never the welts and bruises she covered and people pretended not to see, but the wounds she couldn't tell were there until on April 1st, 1963, she's in the delivery room holding a baby, her son, and she couldn't move, couldn't do anything because she kept thinking: Well something is dead in me. What has been done to me, and why did I allow this to happen? And now. . .
Home is the first grave.
North Denver isn't so bad. From the decked-out Drive-in with the latest movies always playing ―the popcorn sold for only a cent, the nice playground in a neighborhood much too clean-cut for trailer trash like himself, the infamous Grab 'N Go with snacks galore, and the most beautiful machine he's ever laid his eyes on, Vance can conclude that North Denver is not the worst of places. However, amongst the humdrum of suburban life comes his frequent slip-ups.
Vance Hopper is seven years old when he understands that daddy is mean. Night obscures the blurred edges of memory but he remembers, he will always remember. From that moment on, every time his father yells he is seven years old and he is sitting on the couch, a toy soldier strained under the grip of his tiny palm. It's supposed to have been harmless, after all, he's never heard from his other friends of their fathers exploding like this because he put thumbtacks on the English teacher's chair.
All he remembers is the unfamiliar sensation bubbling in his little stomach, festering like a tummy ache his mother would treat with a nice glass of ginger ale.
