#( you look back at your wasted life and you don't see me. / && lou and stanley wolfe. )

[shesboundtobruise]

HAPPIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY…

          It was a breezy, but lovely spring day. She sat at the kitchen table, crayons lined up in a rainbow-like pattern in front of her as she scratched each against the paper before her, the lines and patches and curves shaping up into a unique depiction of what was in her head. Lou hummed to the tune playing from the radio as her mother grinned at her from in front of the oven. The breeze coming through the open windows carried to her daughter the sweet scent of the muffins Ida had been baking and distracted her. The little girl paused, looking up from her work, excited as the woman pulled them from the heat and placed them on the counter.

Just as the song changed, Stanley Wolfe entered the room, sneaking up behind his wife as the baked goods held her attention. He pressed his index finger to his lips as he winked at his daughter and she giggled, mouth covered, but the squeal couldn’t be contained when the man swept his wife into his arms and started to dance with her.

The sweeping sounds of Louis Armstrong wrapped around them and Lou jumped from her chair, running to join them.

[shesboundtobruise]

A MEMORY THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED…

          The soft buzz, hum, and beeps of the various monitors surrounding her lulled her from sleep, like a quiet siren’s song her consciousness followed back to reality. Her eyes slowly opened, blinking, seeing bright white at first before focusing, vision blurring in and out a few times until she could make out the divots in the ceiling.

Then a voice, a man’s voice, explaining things, things her mind wasn’t prepared to properly hear or react to. She felt light and floaty and clearly high without realizing it, the drugs in her drip working nicely to deflect her pain.

“Louise, you’ve been in an accident,” the doctor repeated calmly. “You took quite the tumble, from the looks of it, and from what your father says.”

Her gaze suddenly and instinctively shifted to the seat beside her bed, meeting Stanley’s. He appeared solemn, hunched forward, nodding along as he reached for his daughter’s hand. “Yes. My poor baby.” Baby? He never once referred to her as that, probably even when she was actually an infant. “Clumsy like her father, prone to tripping on her own feet. I blame the shoes too, honestly. Those things always come untied.”

Her tongue lay unused in her mouth, her inability to make it move frustrating her. Surely that was false… But then her father continued, laying the whole thing out – She was running out to meet Eddie, in a hurry as always, and called out to let him know she was leaving. Next thing he heard was the sickening thuds of her hitting each wooden stair on the way down.

It didn’t seem right, but fuck, it was PLAUSIBLE, and the doctor lapped it up as the Sheriff squeezed her hand.

Plausible. Yes.

[shesboundtobruise]

Can you tell us a little bit about Lou's dad?

What's the best way to deal with generational trauma? By perpetuating it, of course.

Stanley Wolfe was born to a hard ass of a father and a fairly cold mother, neither of whom were exactly ready for their bundle of joy to arrive when he did. They made due though, meaning that they provided for him and raised him as they'd been raised. He was born in Goose Creek, South Carolina near where his father Louis, a Navy officer, was stationed. He grew up disciplined, fairly quiet, and always striving to impress Louis in every way he could, despite rarely being able to achieve that. This attitude led him to enlist in the Navy when he was of age, where he did not achieve a rank higher than Petty Officer, which did nothing to please Louis Wolfe.

Once he served and was discharged, Stanley went on to become an officer of the law, moving to Greenville to do so. There he met Ida Snyder, a local beauty queen who was a bit of trouble for the young man. He was drawn in by her beauty, of course, but what really attracted him to her was her sweetness, her carefree attitude, and how she seemingly did whatever it was she wanted. Despite the fact that she was very close to a few people Stanley would later keep tabs on as a police officer, he and Ida married after a short courtship. Louis didn't exactly approve of this relationship and didn't hide it, but he also made no real moves to end it, figuring, at least, it would end up providing him with a grandchildson he could dote on and who could be the future of their family since Stanley and his brother Daniel were fuck-ups, as far as he was concerned. And for years, Stanley and Ida tried to grow their family, with no luck and then the heartbreak of multiple miscarriages, until finally, a baby girl was born. Stanley and Ida were overwhelmed with joy when little Louise entered the world, but Louis, again, wasn't so keen on having a granddaughter, especially as the eldest grandchild. He never minced words about that, lording having two boys over Stanley's one girl, a girl, being stuck in some disgusting and idiotic, backwards world where having a male heir meant everything. While Stanley didn't necessary agree, his father's words and attitude beat him down enough to make him begin to feel bitter toward his wife and his daughter.

That's when the drinking began. Didn't matter that his wife was happier than she'd ever been. Didn't matter that his daughter, the little miracle Ida called her, was healthy and beautiful and everything a parent could ask for. Didn't matter he'd moved up at work and made it all the way to Sheriff of the county. Louis' disparaging and disappointed words did more damage than he'd ever admit and he drank to drown it all out.

A few years passed like this, and Ida tried to give Stanley everything he wanted, especially the son she sensed would bring a little more happiness to his life, but due to the complications of Lou's birth, she was unable to carry any more children to term. This crushed her and when Stanley found out, he wasn't exactly sensitive to this. He blamed himself at first, but then, later on, in a drunken stupor, he blamed Ida. That wasn't the end of his emotional abuse, unfortunately; simply the beginning, and she was also simply the beginning. Soon that bitterness turned on his daughter as well.

Lou was eight when Stanley first struck her. It was so sudden that not even he realized what had happened until Ida's screams pierced his eardrums. The girl had only been defending her mother, angry with him for making Ida upset. She'd only been defending her mother from him, the one person that shouldn't have harmed her, who shouldn't have harmed either of them.

This was a cycle that continued for years. Ida began to become a shell of the vibrant woman he'd fallen for all those years ago. Lou, trying to avoid any possible interaction with either of them, was merely a specter who rarely made an appearance and who floated in on the edges of his vision, until she was a gnat, an annoyance he'd stamp out. Ida tried to keep her family together, tried to bring peace, but when she realized she couldn't, she became a ghost, leaving this plane of existence physically only to continue to haunt the rooms of their home.

The pain of losing the love of his life was unbearable. Stanley blamed himself, how could he not, but all that guilt only added flames to the rage within him. Rather than taking his daughter into his arms and trying to comfort her or shield her from any other hurt in the world, he lashed out even more at her, harmed her more than he'd ever done now that there was no buffer between them to stop him. The physical abuse continued for a couple of more years before Lou put an end to it herself by leaving entirely, no note, no phone number, no address. She just ran into the night and never returned.

Completely alone for the first time in a long time, Stanley didn't know what to do. He traveled to London to see his parents, to beg for help, to find comfort with them, to no avail. Louis, even in his advanced age, looked upon his son in disgust and put the blame for everything in his miserable life squarely on his own shoulders. Stanley returned to the States a husk of man. Alone and empty.

It's been nearly twenty years since Ida passed and over a decade since Lou left him. He's still in Greenville, still in that home, allowing those ghosts to haunt him as his penance. He's tried to find Lou several times with little luck. He apologized the last time he saw her, but now? If he got a 'fuck off' in return, he'd die happy.

[shesboundtobruise]

          HER DAYS IN GREENVILLE WERE NUMBERED, that much had been clear. It had been why she went and met up with Eddie in the first place. To say goodbye without letting on to anything. To kiss him one last time with him thinking he’d see her again. He had caught on though, so in tune with her detachment, as subtle as it was, and things turned into a fight. She promised him it wouldn’t be the last time. She swore.

                                                                    She lied.

On the way home, she gave herself a deadline. Two days. In two days, she’d finish packing up the scraps of her life she wanted to keep and leave. For someone ready and willing to shed even her own skin, this seemed easy enough; she’d already begun cramming the essentials in the trunk of her car. As far as she was concerned, Greenville held nothing for her anymore, save the one person she just broke for the last time and the family of the boy whose demise was her fault. She was sparing herself the ghosts and sparing them all the heartbreak…

Lou grimaced when she saw Stanley’s cruiser in the driveway, hoping he would have opted for an overnight shift since he’d been more awful in the preceding days. He tended to get like that around Ida’s birthday. They both did.

The house lay fairly silent in the darkness, except for the low hum of the television in the living room, pretty standard for three in the morning at the Wolfe residence. Figuring she’d be in for a fight the moment she walked across the threshold, she braced herself, teeth gritted, keys tucked between fingers in case she needed defending. She wouldn’t just take the abuse this time. Not now. Not so close to escaping.

But there was no looming shadow in the doorway, no light flicking on or drunken, rumbling voice to stop her. Instead, as she closed in on the room, she encountered a sleeping figure, slumped in his chair, empty bottle of whiskey beside him. The television in front of him played scenes from her childhood, her pageants, birthdays, Ida’s smiling face. In her father’s lap sat a family portrait from years past, before things went to hell.

All the memories came back to her, the good ones, and the bad, and they overwhelmed her so much that she felt sick to her stomach. How dare he drag these things out? How dare he watch them as if nothing happened, as if he wasn’t the one who ruined it all?

She took a step back, holding back the sobs that wanted to burst from her, allowing the rage and disgust take over instead as she glared down at him. A glare flashed off his old revolver on the coffee table with her movement and it took no conscious thought to reach for it. The action was involuntary. He deserved what was coming to him and she deserved to bring it.

The weapon felt heavy in her hands as she aimed it, drawing closer to the slumbering man, each step feeling more important than the last, until the muzzle pressed against his forehead. Lou’s finger curled around the trigger as her father’s eyes blinked open and after a few seconds, focused on her, as if he knew it would be the end, as if he’d expected it.

Without a word, she pulled back the hammer. Stanley didn’t budge, only staring up at her as she looked back at him with every ugly emotion he ever bestowed upon her.

It was the end. All thoughts of leaving Greenville, starting over far away, left her, replaced by the knowledge that her life ended here, with his. It only caused her to push the gun harder against his skull.

“I’m sorry, Louise.”

It took her a moment to realize he had actually spoken, too stuck in everything in her head, but when she did, when his words replayed in her mind, when she registered what he’d croaked out and that tears flooded his eyes as he did, she stopped breathing. He repeated himself and her eyes widened, saline that had collected spilled down her cheeks, and the haze of deep crimson hatred broke. Her hand shook as she took a step away and then another, weapon dropping from twitching fingers. Before long she was out the door, back in Roosevelt and peeling out of her neighborhood...

Never to return.

[shesboundtobruise]

LETTERS TO MY FATHER...

Stanley,

              Sometimes I wish things could be different between us.               Sometimes I wish I had pulled the trigger.               Hope you’re happy.

                                                                                            - Lou

[shesboundtobruise]

TAG DROP V. (to be continued)