The Birth of Bane (24 page)

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Chapter
Fifteen: A New Life

The second night
after Lenny destroyed the family he had helped create, Myra and I
made love in my bed for most of the night. It wasn’t to make up for
the time we’d lost the night of graduation or because we had the
house to ourselves, though it had something to do with getting us
started in the first place. What we experienced was about something
else entirely.

I will not skirt
the truth or water-down anything of that night. It was passionate,
vocal and very fulfilling for both of us. We watched the growing
light of the dawn from between the sheets of my bed, feeling sated
and sore, sweaty and sticky from our nocturnal exploits. We were
happy to be alive. We were gladdened my mother and my siblings had
survived Lenny as well. It was our intimate way of celebrating
life, and, being teenagers and in love, with little money; we did
it the best way we could imagine – together.

Even with one
broken hand and another smarting like hell, I thoroughly enjoyed
myself.

There was much
change for my family that summer, some of it extenuated from that
fateful night, some of it was self-induced as a direct result of
the very same event.

A few days after
the love-fest with my girlfriend, my mother came home from the
hospital. Her face was still puffy from the fractures in her
cheekbones and around the left eye-socket, but her spirits were up
and she looked pleased to finally be home.

She wasted
little time and got to work restructuring our lives without Lenny
in the picture. Her filing for divorce was being contested by him
and his lawyers. He had the audacity to countersue me for the
beating I had given him. I was scared at first, but our lawyer told
me the case was ridiculous and would eventually be thrown out.
Everyone knew I’d been acting in defense of my mother and my
brother. The fact I’d rearranged his face a bit apparently didn’t
factor, because of the injuries Eli had sustained. The good Sargent
Detective I’d talked to in my room the morning I awoke from the
altercation had ascertained my intentions that night were simple. I
was making sure Lenny remained on the ground.

He had written
in his report: “It was Mr. Jeremiah Favor’s fear for Elijah Favor’s
life, a minor, which forced him to continue with the beating of Mr.
Leonard G. Favor. If Leonard Favor had been capable, he would’ve
killed Elijah Favor on the of night June 25
^th
, 1987.
Jeremiah was acting in defense of his helpless younger
brother.”

How he was able
to garner that from our conversation, we would never know. We never
asked either.

Initially, my
m
om wanted to press assault
charges against him, but decided not to. For her, it was easier to
get her husband out of her life a quickly as possible. A criminal
trial would’ve taken longer than a year and she didn’t want to wait
that long.

In the process,
though, all of the family’s assets had been frozen. Lenny was
ordered to continue paying the family’s expenses. Failure to do so
would result in a Contempt of Court charge levied upon him, which
would prove detrimental to his side of the case overall, so it
behooved him not to miss any sort of payments due.

We all knew it
was in his best interest to keep paying the mortgage and the
utilities and credit cards, but we really never knew what to
expect. Lenny abhorred being told what to do. It was one of his
most consistent traits. None of us would’ve been surprised if one
day we were told the house was in foreclosure and we had to vacate
the premises. So, we waited, walking on eggshells, hoping that
wouldn’t happen. We were uneasy and jumped every time the phone
rang, praying it wasn’t the bank.

But (this was
most likely what kept us going during the summer of 1987) it also
meant the house was no longer for sale and couldn’t be until my
parents’ divorce was finalized. So, there was some consolation
there.

Not everything
was easy though. For my mom, it was the nights that were the
hardest. When the lights were turned out and our heads were resting
upon our pillows was when the memories came back to haunt her. I’m
sure there was a good peppering of remorse as well. I know she
blamed herself for wha
t happened
to Elijah. I know she felt she was partially at fault, because she
hadn’t moved my brother out of harm’s way. This was despite the
fact she had been planning to leave my dad for some time. Events
had outpaced her, though, and she felt ashamed because of
it.

It was the calm
sanity of Valerie that kept the worst away from my mother. My
sister’s no-nonsense approach to life was exactly what my mother
needed. This wasn’t a time for self-recrimination. This wasn’t a
time to wallow in “what might’ve been”. Valerie knew this and
helped my mom get through the low points whenever and wherever they
cropped up.

They slept in
the same bed, took long walks around the Rose Bowl or down in the
LA River. They’d take lawn chairs down below the front porch and
sit underneath the giant magnolia, amongst the ivy and talk for
hours on end. They were inseparable. They did everything
together.

It wasn’t like I
felt left out. I didn’t feel alone or pushed aside in any way. I
had Myra. She was my hard surface to bounce the tough stuff
against. She was my big hug, my languorous kiss, my warm lover. No,
I was fine.

Besides, I knew
what was transpiring. It just wasn’t my time. It was Valerie’s. It
was her turn to take care of my mother. She had tools in her war
chest I’d never come to comprehend, let alone use. She had been the
right person at the right time. She stepped up to that plate and
hit the ball out of the fucking park.

I was so proud
to call myself her brother.

Overtime, things
did get easier. Routine and time, routine and time – we used to say
it like a chant whenever things began to wear on us. After the
third or fourth time, we’d be smiling at one another, warmth in our
hearts. We were in this until the end. We were a team.

It turned out,
the court system in the United States being what it is, there were
still aspect of our lives that didn’t fall under the prevue of the
judge in our case. There was no provision in the court’s ruling
demanding Lenny provide for expenses beyond the bills and Eli’s
medical care (which was covered by insurance through his work), so
after she had healed, my mother took a part-time job as a
receptionist in a doctor’s office. It didn’t pay much, but she
didn’t need to make much to feed us either. Her paycheck was more
than enough to pay for our food and her gas, which was all she had
to worry about.

This helped my
mom as well. Getting out of the house and working in the world
proved distraction enough and eventually her despondency edged
toward confidence. The emotional “hunch” in her back disappeared
and she became more like herself, like the woman who had flowered
while refurbishing a house.

My grandfather,
Lenny’s dad, felt horrible over what had happened. The fact it had
been his progeny who had nearly killed Elijah, his grandson, made
things all the more worse for the poor old man. He was beside
himself with nervous energy and came over as often as he could,
doing what he could around the house, which wasn’t much, because
there was me
and Bruce and Julio
to help my mom in that department.

After a couple
of weeks of “putzing” it became apparent that his skill as a
master-mechanic (self-taught) was what would benefit us the most.
Since none of us younger gentlemen knew much about the combustion
engine, it fell to him to ensure my mother’s car was in tip-top
shape at all times. Because being under the hood of a car was
second nature to him, he came over often. Sometimes he dropped by
for nothing more than to listen to the car, to make sure everything
was in working according to his standards. How he could tell what
was wrong with a car just by listening to it, I don’t know. I could
sit here and write volumes of how baffling it was to me. The car
always sounded the same, how he knew if the engine was receiving
too heavy or too thin a mixture was completely beyond
me.

We just chalked
it up and left it at that. He was genius with cars. There was
little else to be said.

So, from then
on, she never had to pay for oil changes or new tires or anything
of that nature.

To Lenny’s
obvious chagrin, my grandpa James –
his
father - took care of
my mom the only way he could. He made sure she was safe on the
road.

It was nice to
have him around. Though he was a gruff, short-tempered old coot, I
enjoyed the time, however brief, I shared with him. Up to that
point, I really hadn’t known the man all that well. I saw him at
family functions and for the holidays, but he typically stayed to
himself, watching TV, beer in hand, ignoring the lot of us. Having
alone time, learning whatever little I did about cars, doing so
with grandpa James was cool.

It made me
wonder why Lenny was such a world-class scumbag. There was an
obvious disconnect there. Father and son were nothing
alike.

Elijah’s
condition didn’t worsen, which was good, but after a month, it
hadn’t improved either, which was frustrating. He remained in a
coma as his ribs healed, as he recovered from surgery. With my
mother’s added workload, this made things hard. Our days were full.
It helped it was summer, so Valerie and I did most of the household
chores and, believe it or not, the cooking. By the time my mother
got home, we typically had an early dinner ready for us, which we’d
wolf it down and then head straight away for the hospital. We
typically stayed until visiting hours ended and then left for the
night. Occasionally, one of us would stay, but that became a less
frequent occurrence as the days turned into weeks and still, there
was no change.

We had heard
Lenny ended up staying in the hospital for a week and a half, then
had a lot of outpatient reconstructive surgery done to his face
following his encounter with my fists. There was banter about the
family saying he went under the knife more than was necessary, so
he’d emerge the whole episode looking younger. If it was true, I
didn’t know. Frankly, I didn’t care. But, it was sure funny as shit
to talk about.

Another thing
that came to the fore after the blow-up on the deck was the true
identity of Roxanna. Apparently, she did not work with Lenny at the
studio (as I suspected ever since my conversation with the
detective). Her real name was Rosalyn Galtier. She was a waitress
at the IHOP coffee shop in Glendale, someone my one-time-father had
met over breakfast. She must’ve seen he was dressed nice, drove a
nice car and went for the gold, but that’s purely speculation. From
what I saw, she had tapped into another, heretofore, hidden side of
my one-time father and had him wrapped around her little finger.
She’d become his
everything
. How she’d done
it was becoming more and more obvious to the rest of us. She gave
him what no one else had in the past, a doorway to the
real
him.

We were told,
they’d moved in together and were living somewhere on the West Side
of Los Angeles in a high-rise apartment. No doubt they were
spending money that should’ve been ear-marked for us, especially
fo
r Valerie and Elijah. Yet,
whoever said Lenny was a caring father? He wasn’t. As long as his
dick and his ass were getting a decent pounding on a regular basis,
he could care less about us kids.

It was cool with
me, though. The further he was out of our lives the better. If he
died… well, oh well…

The biggest
change was college and where I’d attend it. Both Myra and I had
been accepted to Arizona State and had been looking forward to
starting our lives together, but with Elijah in a constant state of
catatonia, I couldn’t leave my mother, or Valerie. I didn’t care if
it was my future was at stake. I would’ve gladly sacrificed it to
care for them. Together with Eli and Myra, they were everything to
me.

I told Myra to
go ahead with her plans and maybe after a year or so I could join
her.

It resulted in
our first major argument in our fledgling relationship. She, quite
simply, went ballistic. It took me half an hour to get calm her
enough so we could speak civilly to one another. In the end, she
won. There was no way she was
ever
going to leave me, or
my family, for that matter, and that’s all there was to it. She
spent most of August on the phone, meeting with counselors and
potential mentors, and a whole slew of administrators and was able
to get our scholarships – hers in Sociology and mine in English -
transferred to Cal State LA.

The day she came
to the house to tell me, I was so proud of her. I was literally in
awe. I mean, true, I had to tag along and put my signature down
here and there, but
all
of the legwork was done by her. It was
incredible. I was seeing a glimpse of the balls-out determination
she’d harbor whenever she did something for our family later in
life. She revealed that relentless side of her, the big slice of
her that never gives up, that keeps striving forth no matter what.
I guess Timex had it right. She
“…takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’…”