The Ravine Read Online Free PDF Page A

dropping them or otherwise screwing up. And they certainly didn’t understand what it felt like if you happened to have had a little too much to drink the day before, but had to haul your butt out of bed, toss your cookies and then show up for work, putting up with an idiot of a boss all day. These kids just had it too easy, and, if he didn’t keep them in line, they would wind up going bad.
    He’d often remind them that he hadn’t planned on signing up for this deal.
    “Where the hell would you all be,” he would ask, “if I hadn’t done the right thing by your mother when she got pregnant when she was nothin’ but a kid? Where would you be without me? Nowhere! Who would put food on the table? No one!”
    This was the usual sort of dinnertime conversation around the McKenna table. Of course, no one dared mention that Dad had had a hand in getting their mom pregnant, and that, in actuality, Ted had planned to leave town the night before the wedding, but got too drunk and found himself pretty much propped up at the altar by his brother.
    It was during moments like these that Rachel felt the shame radiate from her mother, and she would wonder why she didn’t just pick up and go far, far away. But shame that deep has a way of rubbing offon children, until everyone silently agrees that it’s best just to pretend everything is fine and, most of all, to protect the family secrets from the outside world. This was a lesson Rachel never forgot.
    Rachel’s mom would try to placate Ted, bringing him a beer and encouraging him to relax and let the kids be kids. Sometimes, much to her relief, that would work, and he would be the “old” Ted—the guy she fell in love with, who could tell a joke with the best of them, dance up a storm, and fix just about any gas engine ever invented.
    One of the lies Rachel’s mom told the kids, in order to justify why she ever had anything to do with their dad in the first place, was that she’d never seen him drunk until after they were engaged. And by then it was too late. She said it so many times, she started to believe it.
    And so Rachel learned that her job was to take care of everyone else. She was the one who comforted her mom when things were really bad, she was the one who made her younger brothers tiptoe around Dad, and, along with her mom, she was the one who worried about Terry when she didn’t come home at night. And then she would head off to school, put on a happy face, and make believe she was like all the other kids, with loving parents and a happy home.
    So it was a big step to bring Carolyn home one day after school to show her the new blouse she had bought downtown at Higbee’s and was saving for the upcoming April dance.
    The girls were sitting in Rachel’s room, thumbing through a magazine, giggling as they debated which hairdo to wear to the dance, when all of a sudden they heard a loud crash come from the kitchen.
    “Don’t worry about that; it’s nothing,” said Rachel.
    “What, are you kidding? It sounds like somebody fell down out there,” Carolyn said, and she was out the bedroom door before Rachel could stop her.
    Rachel’s dad was lying on the floor, trying to pull himself up, and cursing the cops in Newberry for not having the damn sense to justleave a guy alone when he was driving home from work. Just then there was a commotion at the front door and two uniformed police officers came in, lifted Ted up, cuffed him, and dragged him into the squad car, kicking and screaming.
    Carolyn did her best to pretend she hadn’t seen what had happened, but when her eyes met Rachel’s, they both began to cry and Rachel ran into her room, followed by her friend. Carolyn insisted that Rachel come home with her, have dinner with the family, and stay the night. She would not take no for an answer.
    That night they sat up talking in Carolyn’s room until three in the morning, and that was the first time Rachel told the truth about her life to another person.