And Our Parents

Part 6 ( Dirty Water )

Becky digs through her purse, past chapstick and tampons and candy wrappers until she finds the old, tarnished key she hasn't used in years. It slips into the lock, and turns easily.

She's home.

She's been here a few times over the years, of course, to visit, but it isn't the same. This is a different sort of homecoming, one that she's put off as long as possible.

The house is quiet as she enters, and she quickly surmises from the fact that Carolyn's car is not in the driveway that she and Constantine must be out. Just as well.

Becky hasn't lived in this house for more than a brief stay since halfway through her senior year of high school. After that, Bill had graciously agreed to let her stay with him the first time to finish out her year when Carolyn moved to the UK. Then she'd gone to college, then Toronto, Chicago, LA...

All that to say, it's weird to be back.

Especially because now there's a stranger who's lived in the house longer than Becky has, making her seem like a new guest by comparison.

No, she chides herself, Constantine is not a stranger – he's almost your stepfather. But that was the wrong way to phrase it to herself, since that word triggers Becky's gag reflex...

He's Carolyn's... "friendly companion"? Someone who keeps her occupied, and generally happier so she's less difficult to be around. And isn't that a great service he's providing? Becky ought to thank him.

She brings her suitcase upstairs to the "guest room", which decades ago, was once known as Becky's bedroom, and now will be hers once again for the first time in almost nineteen years.

It was stripped of all traces of Becky's presence, of course, when the family moved out and Carolyn put the house up for rent. Her twin bed frame is still there, but with more sensible adult sheets on it, not the starry print that had last adorned it when she was a teenager. The walls are bare, except for a couple of inoffensive landscape watercolors; the bookshelves have been stripped of Becky's crime thrillers, nonfiction psychology books and occasional vampire fantasy series, replaced with easy beach reads and some framed family photos.

This won't do.

Before so much as unzipping her suitcase, Becky storms out of the bedroom and pulls down the dusty ladder from the trapdoor in the ceiling, preparing herself to brave the unfinished fiberglass-filled attic. After fumbling around in the half-light, she finds a few boxes in the corner labeled "EVE", and carts them down one by one.

The cardboard boxes reveal a treasure trove of the late nineties, a blast through Becky's past. A RoseArt kit of shitty drawing and craft supplies Becky had used during her brief artistic phase. A couple trophies from regional debate championships. A photo album with Mickey Mouse on the cover, which holds a few Polaroids of the rare happy family moments: Becky blowing out the candles on her tenth birthday. Teenaged Becky next to toddler Kenny who had just learned to walk. Carolyn, Becky, and Kenny on vacation in the Berkshires.

And of course, the most important artifact of all: Becky pulls out the long paper scroll and chuckles, because she already knows what it is before she pulls off the elastic. She unrolls it to reveal her much-coveted poster of Buffy Summers. Becky had spent many nights in high school staring up at that poster where it was proudly displayed over her bed. She owes her bisexual awakening to that three-foot-long rendering of Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Becky's smiling down at the poster and feeling the warm fuzzy nostalgia rush back to her when she hears a tap tap tap and looks up to see Kenny standing at the entrance to her room, knocking against the doorframe.