The following story is in alternating voices as labeled. Hope it is not too confusing...or too long.
*****
Paul
Sherry started hanging around our house when she was six or so. She lived a few doors down from us but her family life, to say the least, was very unsettled so our daughter Sandy's house became her refuge. Sherry's parents were alcoholics and argued incessantly. Oftentimes when neighbors were in their yards, they could hear violent yelling, mostly by her father, and several times the cops had to come.
Sherry was a very smart and sweet girl and she and Sandy became fast friends, even though they were totally different. Sherry was extremely shy and Sandy was very outgoing, making friends with everyone she met. Sandy was also athletic and could excel in any sport she wanted; Sherry, to put the kindest descriptor on it, was awkward. Sandy was also beautiful, tall, and lean with gorgeous hair, eyes and very smooth, tanned skin. Sherry could have been more attractive if she'd worked at it a bit. Even as she got older, she wore no makeup and dressed dowdily.
The only true friend she had was Sandy who made her other friends accept her, even when they didn't want to. Sherry stayed at our house at least a couple of nights during the week and often, much if not all the weekend. If Sandy ever got tired of her, she never complained. Sherry was a member of the family. She went on vacations and spent most holidays with us.
Our family, the Kents - mother Beth, Sandy and myself - were a very close group. After Sandy was born, I cut down on business travel and tried to play a role in every part of her life. I coached several sports teams she was on, we went on hikes and canoe trips together, played all kinds of games, many we made up, and had long conversations about a variety of topics, from politics to religion to the latest movie. I was so lucky to have Sandy in my life.
Sherry's relationship with her family was altogether different. Her parents were totally dysfunctional. They'd inherited some money and her father dabbled as a realtor but he seemed to spend his mornings golfing, his afternoon drinking and god knows what he did at nights because he often got home late or did not show up at all. Sherry's mom, when sober, could be a nice lady but she also drank heavily. She was often pretty much incoherent when Sherry got home from school and much of the time she didn't fix any meals, leaving Sherry to scrape something together. Given the yelling, it was clear that the father verbally, and probably physically, abused his wife.
Sherry seemed to hate her father. She both hated and felt sorry for her mother. She seldom mentioned either but a few times when she confided in me or Beth, she told us how she envied the relationship we had with Sandy. I asked her a couple of times if her father ever hit her, because she'd sometimes have bruises on her arms and once or twice on her face. She didn't give a direct answer either time and wouldn't look me in the eye to deny it. She would just mumble that she was a "ditz" or maybe it was "spaz." If she was abused, it wasn't evident enough for anyone to get in touch with authorities, even Beth and I were tempted.
Sandy was always very popular with boys and as most kids do at their ages, she'd go out with a group of friends and early on, there'd be a series of boys she'd be interested in but nothing serious. It was only when she was around 16 that she started focusing on one boy, Jeff, who was in her same grade. He was a great kid and we figured that sooner or later she would get more serious about some guy and we were glad it was Jeff. We'd known him and his family almost all his life. In some ways, he seemed to be a female version of Sandy; there were a good pairing.
After Jeff and Sandy became more serious about each other, it was awkward for Sherry. There were times Jeff and Sandy wanted to be alone, and to her credit, Sherry was sensitive to that and would just hang around Beth and me while Jeff and Sandy went on a date. Unfortunately, Sherry didn't have any other close friends and had never been with a boy, as far as we knew. Sandy tried to fix her up a few times but gave up because Sherry would not go through with it. Sherry's friends believed that she was just awkward and shy and therefore, had no real interest in boys. But, as I found out later, they were wrong. She did want to meet boys but she was afraid and lacked confidence.
We loved Sherry and felt sorry for her so we tried to involve her in things we were doing when Sandy was out with Jeff. But Beth and I were pretty active in weekend sports and Sherry was not athletic at all. A few times we got her out on the tennis court and encouraged her to ride bikes with us but it was obvious that she didn't enjoy either activity. I got her to go kayaking with me a couple of times but that didn't really work either. She joined us for many meals, both at home and when we'd go out, and she would join us when we'd go to the movies. Oftentimes if Sandy wasn't around, she would just hang out with us, reading or watching TV.
As the girls were nearing graduation, Sherry's dad was killed in an auto accident early one morning as he was coming home. He and a family in the other car were killed and of course, it was reported later that he was dead drunk at the time. If Sherry ever cried, no one ever saw it.
Just before high school graduation, Sherry told us that she couldn't go to the local college that she'd been accepted to because her father had left a lot of debt. In short, she and her mother were broke. We tried to talk her into letting us pay for college but she refused. She was moving with her mother to her grandmother's house, because the grandmother was old and ill. Of course given her mother's condition, who, although she quit drinking cold-turkey when her husband died, had numerous health problems, Sherry would stay at home and take care of the two of them, while working in the side business she'd started a couple of years before - computer graphics. She could make a few dollars that way, enough to buy books she couldn't get out of the library. That was the only recreation she appeared to enjoy.
...
Sherry
I first got to know Sandy and her family when we were both in kindergarten. Even at that age, I knew that things were different between our families. I didn't know at the time if we were out of the norm or if the Kents were; I just know it was different. My parents never seemed to get along and there was always yelling, or at least it was mostly my dad yelling and my mother trying to stay away from him. As time passed, they both started drinking more. My father was gone a lot and my mother I guess drank to deaden her emotions, but of course I didn't understand any of that at the time. The only thing I knew was that the Kents' house was peaceful and happy and mine was a hellhole.
I stayed at the Kents as much as I could. They seemed to like me and accept me even though I never knew why. I wasn't cute or bubbly or good at anything and they were the opposite in all respects. Sandy was very popular and really beautiful. But they never made me feel like I was a leper, the way a lot of people did. Sandy's parents, Paul and Beth, made me feel like their own daughter and it was the most amazing feeling.
Sandy and I used to do everything together, and even when she went out with other friends, she made sure I was along. Boys, and some girls, at first made fun of me until Sandy made it clear that insulting me was the same as insulting her and that she wouldn't take it. For the most part, that stopped it because Sandy was the most popular girl in school and everyone wanted to be accepted by her.
