golden

fifteen: the boy who touched the sun

Port Aransas was but a small town on the edge of an island off the coast of Texas. A town where nothing of consequence ever happened. And as such, the Depression had hit it hard. The Second War had hit it harder. Financial ruin and starvation had thinned the population in the thirties; bullets had nearly decimated it in the time of war. Not many who went off to fight came back to tell their tales. Those that did weren't the same men who had shipped out.

The Howard Dandridge that put on his uniform had not returned from Europe. The Howard Dandridge who came back was a stranger in the guise of family.

Elizabeth's fingernails tip-tapped against her knee, dirt spinning under the wheels of Harry's buttery yellow convertible. With each passing second, with each spin of the tires, each breath, they drew closer and closer to the place she dreaded most.

Home.

The drive out to the Dandridge farm from town was arduous and lonesome without company. With company, still arduous. The road remained unpaved and there was no scenery but dying grass and the occasional patch of wildflowers. The farm was in the opposite direction of the beach, so there was no beautiful ocean horizon to set eyes on.

"Wanna tell me 'bout 'em? Before we get there?" Harry's hand sat in the empty space between them. It had for several miles.

She didn't have the energy necessary to even hold his hand. All her thoughts were of her family. How ill was her mother? What did taking a turn for the worse consist of exactly? Would the flowers in the nursery be alive and thriving? Was the vegetable garden still existent? Would her father be as absent-minded as ever? Would Howie be sober?

The ultimate question. Howie's sobriety. He had been doing well for weeks, staying away from the sauce and any location where he could be tempted to stray from his wagon. He was trying and succeeding. But Howie loved their mother. He worshipped her and the ground she stood on. The sudden decline in her health, the hanging question of her mortality, was bound to deliver a fatal blow to his stability.

All of her hard work would be washed away.

"My father doesn't know his ass from his face most days." She told Harry without looking at him. This curve...only a few more minutes. "He isn't always present. He gets on better with plants than people."

"Sounds like someone else I know." He finally reached over and grabbed onto her hand. His fingers curled around hers and he squeezed once lightly. "Your mum?"

Her mother.

Agnes Dandridge. What was there to say about her mother? For all her years, Elizabeth could not conjure up a single positive remark about the woman who had given her life. There were no happy memories or good times to reflect on. Each remembrance of her childhood was a sharp stab in the chest.

"She's..." Her voice trailed off in search of something cordial, "She's my mother, I suppose." Harry asked what she meant. Truthfully, she couldn't say. There was no great argument or moment to spark the disconnect between mother and daughter. It had simply always existed. Elizabeth had been born with the dislike of her mother. "I saw my first film with her. It was the three of us, me, Mama, and Howie. She took us to the pictures."

"What did you see?"

Some things turned fuzzy in her mind as time wore on. But not that. Never that day. It was the day she knew who she was meant to become. What she was meant to become.

"The Gay Divorcee. The second I laid eyes on Ginger Rogers I knew I wanted what she had. She was a star. I didn't want to be her. I wanted to be better than her."

Harry squeezed her hand again. "You are better than her."

Elizabeth shook her head as the small farmhouse came into view at the end of the red dirt road. The nauseating odor of chicken manure wafted through her nose. From the corner of her eye, she saw Harry's face pinch in disgust at the smell. Though it had been a long while since she had experienced it, her nose didn't even bother on instinct. Enough years of the putrid scent had worn her senses down.