Chapter Five
Dwayne, the strip mall, the parking lot, it all dissolves away as I absorb this news.
In an instant, a thousand insults and humiliations resurface, each one stinging like a swarm of murder hornets. The image of her forces itself into my brain—hair matted and unkempt, eyes bloodshot, gin blossoms splotching her cheeks, a mostly empty bottle clutched in her hand as she loomed in the doorway to my bedroom.
You’re such a loser. Why can’t you be more like your brother?
To think that I carried you in my body for nine months. What did I ever do to be cursed with such a dismal failure?
I wanted, wished, prayed for her to stop, for someone to get between me and her. But no one did. No one could. By the time she had lost whatever hold she had on sobriety, Grandpa Bernie was dead, a
