Texts from Bennett (11 page)

ME:
Well she brought you some brownies and $200.

BENNETT:
200$ wat!.datz more then wat she sapossed to give me for a reward LoL damn dis bitch luv me

ME:
Dude!

ME:
You lied to my neighbor about saving her cat. If she knew the truth she’d probably try to kill you.

BENNETT:
why u haten on a balla ?

ME:
She’s my neighbor! I LIVE here.

ME:
Did you not gain anything from the conversation we had after you stole the Adderall?

BENNETT:
yes i realy did dats why im like why u trippen i didnt steal nuthin

ME:
YOU STOLE A FUCKING CAT!

BENNETT:
i didnt steal nuthin from U doe

ME:
You’re a thief, dude.

BENNETT:
i aint no thief i dont gatta steel shit i git hella chee$e

ME:
Oh do you? Then why don’t you have a job yet?

BENNETT:
if u wud stop piccin on me i cud tell u sumthin

ME:
What?

BENNETT:
i got a job

BENNETT:
4 real i found a gig to work at

ME:
Oh really?

BENNETT:
yup

ME:
Liar.

BENNETT:
i sweir..100 precent tru

BENNETT:
i got hired 2day

ME:
Doing what?

BENNETT:
daliverin pizza

ME:
Delivering pizza?!

ME:
ON YOUR BIKE???

BENNETT:
i no but dats why i need Ur help wit da bitch acros da street.if i can make her fall in luv wit me she will let me use her car to daliver pizza..she drive a DOpe ride!

BENNETT:
her dad died and left her tons of money so she a rich ass ho

ME:
Wait wait wait . . .

ME:
Your plan . . .

BENNETT:
wat

ME:
Let me get this straight. Your plan. Is to manipulate Tallulah into letting you drive her car . . . A BMW SUV . . . To deliver pizzas?

BENNETT:
can git U ur money dis way

ME:
What are you going to tell Tallulah?

BENNETT:
wat do u mean

ME:
Won’t she get suspicious that a “house owner” needs to drive her car all the time? What about the fact it will smell like pizza?

BENNETT:
peep game

BENNETT:
heres wat i wuz thinken i will B like baby i want to pratect da enviranmint so we shud share a car i will stop driven my car and u can let me use urs

BENNETT:
she luvs me i bet she say yes

ME:
You don’t own a car.

BENNETT:
she dont kno dat..i pointed at ur bitch car an said it wuz mine

ME:
No you didn’t.

BENNETT:
why da fucc it matta ? im jus maccin on her

ME:
So who did you say the people that live in “your” house are?

BENNETT:
i said yall my meth head cuzins

ME:
WHAT?!?!

Fuck! Agghhhh!

I was so shocked by his behavior that I accidentally tripped and stubbed my toe on my dishwasher. Shouldn’t pace around the house while texting.

ME:
Oh my god! Come to the house immediately. You and I need to have a serious chat. I’m not fucking with you. Do NOT steal or fuck anything up. Just come here.

BENNETT:
R u gonna tell talula da truth

BENNETT:
dont snitch on me nigga rats sleep wif da fishes

ME:
You’re unbelievable.

ME:
It’s so embarrassing that I’m not going to tell her so I can avoid having my neighbors think my family is crazy.

BENNETT:
R u gunna tell harper

ME:
Maybe. Maybe not. Come to the house ASAP.

BENNETT:
do u mind if i stop by talula house on da way their i”m stress out about dis hole thing and wont feel beter till i C her

That was the problem with Bennett. He had an innocent heart. His upbringing and the environments he grew up in were the reason he was so lost. Constantly lying. Pilfering pills and cats. Being crass and rude. The fact that he took the initiative to stop by Tallulah’s on the way back made one thing clear though: he felt guilty and needed to confess. For Bennett to need to be absolved and cleansed of his wrongdoings to Tallulah, even though she didn’t know one way or the other, was pretty big of him. I could see the sprouts of maturity starting to blossom from the soul of my young cousin’s rich soil.

ME:
That’s big of you. Do you want to come pick the money up so you can give it back to her when you apologize?

BENNETT:
wat

BENNETT:
apalagize? nah . i jus wanna stop by her crib and try 2 git laid real quicc i jus buy condems dont wanna waist $

Never mind.

ME:
No. Come here now. I’m going to go for a jog. I’ll talk to you after I get showered.

I was majorly put off by the shit he was stirring. My aunt was in such a pill coma that she had said all of ten words to me since they had been there, and the words she did say were bizarre and completely nonsensical. Tim played Xbox and read weird books about secret government societies and the Illuminati and the Reptilians. He also never showered. Bennett was lying to my neighbors and trying to swindle them for their luxury vehicles. It was not a good way to kick off things between all of us.

I walked into the living room to say hi to Lillian and Tim. They had been so quiet that I began worrying about whether they felt welcome. When I got to the living room, Tim was sleeping on the floor with the looping intro of the Xbox game
Red Dead Redemption
playing on repeat. The music was irritating, so I shut it off. Tim didn’t notice.

“Hello, Lillian,” I said to my slumbering aunt as she snored and whistled away.

“Shhhhhhh,” she responded.

“Lillian it’s your nephew. Mac.”

“Hi, sweetie. Come back another time. I’m sleeping to heal my brain.”

She was a mystery, that’s for sure.

I went for a jog that night to clear the clutter out of my head. Bennett wasn’t home yet when I got back. I laid my sweaty frame overtop my king-size duvet on my bed and fell asleep for a while. I woke up at 11:00 p.m. It was a couple of hours later. Bennett’s
navy-blue combat boots were under the coatrack by the front door, so I knew he was in the house. I decided to go downstairs to the basement to seriously lay things out on the table.

I wanted to explain to him how important keeping a harmonious Zen between my neighbors was to me. And to explain that I was going to have to throw his family out onto the street if he did anything else wrong. I wasn’t going to even blame Harper for it. By now, I wanted them gone just as badly as she did. The only reason I didn’t boot them out onto the street was because Lillian, the person I was interested in helping, had barely even gotten to stay with us. I didn’t want to hurt her because her son was an idiot.

He was asleep, sitting up on the new basement sofa, with his chin on his chest and his phone in his lap. The red light on the upper left corner of his phone was blinking to alert new text messages. I shook him to wake him up. His phone fell off his leg, onto the floor. He grumbled and stretched out on the couch in a deep pot-induced sleep.

I picked up his phone to make sure it hadn’t cracked. It was a cheaply built flip phone, and it was showing in nearly eight-bit graphics:

1 new txt.

Intriguing. This kind of phone could store only fifteen to twenty text messages at a time, but I decided to read through them anyway, like a true asshole cousin. All of them were to/from Tallulah. I wasn’t really sure how he’d gotten her number, but it seems the damage was already done.

TALULA:
Please refrain from text messaging me. Thank you for finding my cat.

I scrolled to the earliest one left on his phone.

BENNETT:
na like i said i luv anamels alot 2.i used to rescue rockwilders im one of da highest paid members of PITA

TALULA:
Oh, well that’s nice. Ur a very sweet boy.

BENNETT:
i cry at nite wen dey play dem cammercials wit da homliss kittins i wish i cud adopt all of dem and play gatarr for dem

BENNETT:
u their

BENNETT:
hello

TALULA:
Those commercials are SO sad. I wish I could adopt them all too! I donate a lot of money to animal rescue places.

BENNETT:
U want me 2 cum over

BENNETT:
i got some natral light beer we cud tell storys abut cats

TALULA:
I don’t think so.

BENNETT:
ur body is fanaminal

BENNETT:
i fanticized abut U all day in my office at PITA today i cant lie i want u so bad it hurts let me rub u down wit locion

TALULA:
Ugh.

TALULA:
U are bordering on inappropriate with ur texts.

BENNETT:
r u their baby

BENNETT:
hello i want to make love to U while i snuggel a kitten

BENNETT:
hi

BENNETT:
??? i want to feel Ur body aginst mine lets git macthing kittin tatoos

BENNETT:
send me pix of ur booty

I closed the phone, put it back on his lap, and walked to the chair adjacent to the sofa he was sleeping on. I grabbed the brown blanket from it and covered him up. I turned off the lights and went upstairs so I could have a glass of wine and stare at my aunt as she nodded in and out of consciousness on the couch.

She was now watching the Home Shopping Network, obviously in a painkiller haze. I had never grasped how childish and bizarre she was, but at this point precisely, seeing her doing . . . something . . . with a bowl of ice cream and her bare hands, I was beginning to understand why the family had treated her so different.

“Hi, Aunt Lillian. Whatcha doing?” I asked.

Not noticing what she was doing until I snapped her out of her pill coma and verbally pointed it out, she looked at me excitedly. “I’m making an ice-cream sculpture. It’s George Clooney!” she said, pointing down at a bowl of strawberry ice cream she was playing in. She was using her bare hands, and they were covered in a sticky pink film.

“Oh, okay,” I said, completely weirded out.

“Can you get me more ice cream so I can make Brad Pitt? I wanna make the cast from
Ocean’s Eleven
!” she yelped.

“Uh, actually, let’s stop making ice-cream sculptures. Okay? That strawberry ice-cream isn’t even mine. It’s Harper’s, and she loves it. She gets really mad when anyone touches her food in the fridge. I’m gonna have to buy her a fresh container of strawberry ice cream now.”

“Ohhhh!!!!” Aunt Lillian groaned.

Her eyes were tightly locked shut and her face was soured. She appeared to be feeling some sort of physical pain.

“What? Are you okay? Aunt Lily?” I rushed to help her.

“I think so,” she said, adjusting her pajamas and dusting them off. “I just felt like you was a reprimandin’ me, and it made me sting.”

“I’m so sorry for that. It’s honestly not a huge deal. Have as much ice cream as you want. Sorry, I’m tired and cranky.”

“It’s okay, dear. I’m fine. It just caused me to have the damnedest memory,” she said, luckily no longer in pain but still with an awful tart facial expression.

“Memory? Of what?”

“Your mama,” she said, as she simultaneously tilted her head to look me in the eyes.

“My mom?” I said.

“Oh, Macky. She was just the sweetest, most precious thing,” she said, adjusting her body so she was sitting up straight and no longer slouching on the couch. “That’s very special you have a girl who likes strawberry ice cream, dear. Very special.”

I took a seat on the ottoman. I hadn’t, at all, talked to Lillian
about my mom since she’d been here. I hadn’t really even talked to her that much.

“Mac, your mother and me . . . we used to have the funnest summers.”

By the way she was smiling, I could tell that a film of blissful reminiscence was playing on the movie screen of her imagination. Her eyes were the size of silver dollars and absorbing the scenery from whatever decade she was wandering through. I’d never seen her so composed and articulate.

“Yeah? Why? What did you guys do that was so fun?” I asked, eager to hear what my aunt had to say.