sweetheart redux

9. George loved to buy drinks for Beth, he loved to be around her when she drank, because when she drank, she became so relaxed and so much kinder, and she almost never lost control by becoming too drunk, at least not for the first several years.   She just became happy, when normally she was guarded and dour. It was a dark and stormy night.   There was something they'd been talking about that George couldn't stop turning over in his mind as he sat in his car in the bar's parking lot, watching the neon light of the sign catch on the rain drops and turn them red on his windshield, while he waited for the car's engine to warm up. He'd told Beth about driving Molly to Josie's house, not worrying about betraying Molly's whereabouts on a school night, because it never occurred to Beth to worry about her daughter. "Josie's probably having more problems with this man she used to see.   I overheard the two of them talking about it," -- a...

7. It was it a night like any other.   No it wasn’t.   It was raining that night, I remember, and it doesn't often rain in Southern California.   I lived with Richard.   I lived with just Richard from the time I was two, when Beth and Richard got their divorce, until the time I was 6.   Then there was quiet and cynical Linda, my almost stepmother who lived with us for a few years, then just me and Richard again. Anyway, it was a dark and stormy night.   It was around 8:30 and Richard was on a date when Josie called me, crying.   She was my best friend for three years, and I was a little in love with her, the way in books and movies sometimes and I’m guessing in real life too (with other girls besides me), teenaged girls become obsessed with each other when they become close friends.   It was hard not to; she understood me so perfectly, from all the many hours-long conversations we had the endurance and the enthusiasm for, at the zenith of...

6. On a Thursday night (a school night), when I was 15, a thing happened that has made me feel closer to George than to people my own age, ever since. Richard and I lived in a small town about 30 miles east of Los Angeles proper, called Monrovia.   Monrovia nestles right up against the base of the San Gabriel mountains, like a dog curled up and napping at the foot of a master’s giant bed.   The flat, southerly part of Monrovia is mostly apartment buildings built in the 1950's.   One time I was walking around a neighborhood that had literally only pick-up trucks parked in the driveways and along the curb.   As the land starts to noticeably elevate, in other words, when you start to notice you're walking uphill, that's where the nice houses are, little mansions some of them, Ranch-style houses, also built in the 1950's.   I don't know if it's from something I read or saw a photo of, but I imagine that Marilyn Monroe stayed in one of these houses. ...

5.             The friendship of George and Richard was wrought with enough complicated feelings and nuances that I feel compelled to describe it in familial terms, but that does not provide the sort of shortcut I wish it would.   I want to say, “They loved each other like brothers, and like brothers, neither one could imagine life without the other, but, also like brothers, they did not always enjoy each others' company,” but this is not quite right, because, through Beth as well as Molly (me), George and Richard were connected to each other for over 20 years, but their connection had its lulls and eddies, and there were whole years where they only saw each other at holidays, when Richard would be dropping Molly off at Beth’s apartment and, like clockwork (because George was set in his ways) it would be George who answered the door, having arrived at Beth’s place a couple hours earlier to help clean up for Molly’s visit...