Family Merger

“I can’t leave.”

“You’re teaching me to be sensitive. Remember? Well, you can’t do that if you don’t understand my feelings, and you never will unless I show you a few things you know nothing about.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere I’m sure you’ve never been before.”

Chapter Three

Kathryn had ridden in several Bentleys before but never in one she was certain cost more than three hundred thousand dollars. She was just as certain the car had never been down these particular roads. Neither had she.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Where I grew up,” Ron said.

They had left Charlotte and were somewhere in what she presumed was the far reaches of southern Mecklenberg County. It was an area where small farms were either still in production or had been allowed to grow into young forests. Some areas next to Lake Wylie had been developed into upscale resorts. Ron pulled off the road into the parking lot of a local fish camp, turned away from the restaurant, and drove into a strip of woods. When they emerged on the other side, she saw the trailer park.

Ron pulled the Bentley to a stop near a small trailer. The grass around it had been cut recently, but the steps had collapsed and the trailer had rusted badly. “That’s where I grew up.”

“Does anyone live here?”

“No. I still own it.”

“Why?”

“So I never forget where I came from.”

Kathryn looked at laundry hanging on lines, children playing in the spring sun wearing nothing but dirty underpants, two women looking tired and worn down, and a hound dog lazing in the sun. Kathryn felt as if she were gazing at the set for a black-and-white movie set in the fifties.

“I lived here until I was fourteen,” Ron said. “I was ten years old before I knew enough to hate it.”

“What happened?”

“We had court-ordered busing for desegregation. I got sent to a wealthy white neighborhood where I saw kids I thought existed only on TV. I came home and told my parents, but they didn’t care that I didn’t have a winter coat or shoes without holes in them as long as they had enough booze. The rich kids had so much stuff they didn’t bother keeping track of it. I got a coat from the lost and found. I even found a pair of shoes my size.”

He sounded as though he were talking about somebody else, but Kathryn knew he would never have held on to the rusting trailer if he didn’t still feel the hurt.

“When I heard one of the boys say Charlotte Country Day School was giving scholarships to smart kids, I made up my mind to get one. My parents didn’t want me mixing with the rich kids. They thought it would turn me into a snob. I didn’t know what was at that school, but I knew it was something I wanted.”

“I gather you got that scholarship,” Kathryn said.

He nodded. “But I didn’t get what I wanted. I was overweight, wore glasses, was smarter than anybody else in my class, and I was a trailer park kid. I had nothing to do but study hard so I could win a college scholarship.”

“To Yale.”

“And Harvard for my MBA.”

“Your parents must have been very proud of you.”

“My parents were supposed to come to my high school graduation. I was valedictorian. I wanted them to see what I’d accomplished. I wanted them to be proud of me.”

Ron’s voice had taken on a different tone, one she could only describe as trying to keep some fierce emotion in check.

“A friend talked them into going drinking instead. They were killed when he lost control of his car trying to outrun the police.”

“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Don’t be. I don’t think they cared much.”

“Is that why you care so much?”

He turned to face her. “You can’t understand where I’m coming from because you’ve never been there. You can’t understand what drives me because you’ve always had everything—looks, money, acceptance.”

“Try me.”

Ron retrieved an envelope from the glove compartment. He opened it and pulled out a picture. “That’s me at sixteen, fat, glasses and all.” He pulled out a second picture. She was stunned to see it was of her debutante ball.

“Where did you get that picture?”

“Newspaper archives go back years.” He pulled out another picture. “This is what I looked like at eighteen when I worked at Taco Bell.” And another picture. “This is you.” The picture had been taken just before a group of students from her boarding school went to France on an exchange program.

“I won’t apologize for having advantages others don’t.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying you don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to not have proper food, warm clothes, toys at Christmas. Even worse, what it’s like being ignored, realizing nobody knows you exist, wouldn’t care if you didn’t. That really gets to you. You’ve been accepted your whole life just because of who you are. I’ve had to earn recognition, sometimes force people to give it to me. Well, nobody is going to ignore Cynthia. I’ll see to that.”

She was beginning to understand. It really wasn’t about the money. “But Cynthia does feel ignored…by you.”

“I’ve done everything I could for her.”

“You’ve paid someone else to do it. She’d rather it had been you.”

After an uncomfortable silence, she picked up the second picture. “You don’t look like that now. What happened?”

He grinned, and something inside her went all open and tender. She wished he wouldn’t do that. She didn’t like the effect on her.

“I had a late growth spurt, lost my baby fat, took up intramural sports and got contacts.”

“No hormones or steroids?”

“Just decent food and exercise.”

She smiled. “And shoes without holes.”

He smiled back. “And not from the lost and found.”

“Was it hard being a scholarship student?” She didn’t know why she asked that question. All the schools she’d attended had scholarship students. She knew they usually felt left out and unwanted.

“I hated it. I felt I ought to at least be given a chance to prove I could fit in. The other scholarship kids didn’t seem to care, but it ate away at me all the time. From that first day in the fourth grade, I swore one day I’d be so successful nobody could ignore me.”