After my father left us ...

This blog picks up where the June 21st blog left off:

Beautiful women get things. It’s just how it is. My mother was a beautiful woman. Actually she still is. And I was her gangly daughter with the small eyes and big feet. “That’s ok,” she’d tell me, “you’ll fill out when the time comes.” She meant that when I got boobs the boys would be more interested. That was before puberty, before my father’s accident, and even then I thought what’s so great about having boys interested? I had to admit that whenever we were in trouble, and I mean little troubles like car trouble or not enough to get into the movies, there would always be a man who would help us out. She could smile and laugh that soft way men like and the man helping her would go into a trance. Kevin and I would be invisible until mom would point at us, then he ‘d pat us on the head and say “what beautiful children, they take after their mother.” She’d always laugh and Kevin and I would become invisible again. It happened so often that when the man would turn away Kevin and I would turn to each other and with big fake smiles we'd bat our eyes. I know her laugh was fake in those moments because I had heard her laugh many times when we were alone. Her real laugh was harder and if it lasted more than a few seconds she would snort. I liked her real laugh. The fake one made me invisible. One particular day after dad left she was in the cafeteria at the courthouse with no money to pay for her lunch and of course a man came to her rescue. This time it was a lawyer named, Lionel O’Brien, whose wife had died two years earlier. He bought her lunch and she batted her eyes. He gave her a job at his office and nine months later they were married. Like I said, beautiful women get things. Most folks would say she landed on her feet and in some ways she did. But her snort disappeared and I became even more invisible.