Mom's Cousin Lenna, Day 640: 5 Minute Freewrite: Prompt: awry

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Mom was dead.

And now Mom's cousin Lenna was dead.

DeLorean was perfectly able to stomach the sight of Lenna mummified on a motorcycle in a hole in a rock wall. She was tough enough for any amount of physical trauma, bloodshed, battery, or simply disgusting bodily antics like Dwayne's. She could handle the exquisite fiery pain of a UTI brought on by Dwayne's persistent antics. Physical pain is easy, she always said, but mental stress is the killer. Like hearing her offspring wail about some First World Problem. They needed famine, pestilence, war, or real danger to teach them some coping skills.

Did they miss her? Funny how easily she had put her own husband and children out of her mind for so many days running. Had Dwayne started hunting for her yet?

Her sobbing was the worst thing to happen since she spray-painted the van and hit the road three weeks ago.

Crying like a baby! In front of Rory! God have mercy. She couldn't stop. Like a derailed train pulling a hundred cattle cars off a cliff, she dragged boxcars full of flashbacks across the landscape of her mind. Starting with her own mother who never seemed to like her, always calling her "a Lenna." Sassy DeLorean grew up to be a submissive wife like Mom.

All these years later she'd come to the desert in search of Lenna--and all she got was Rory.

All Rory had was his mummified mom with her long-dead cat. And a shed full of weird mechanical things on wheels.

"Go on now." Rory's voice penetrated her horrible wail of misery. "Get up, DeLorean." He pulled her fists from her eyes and hauled her up to a sit.

She wanted to tell him off for that, but all she could do was weep like her First World Problems offspring. All her plans had gone awry. Her whole life had gone awry. Wry meant twisted. Going awry means getting twisted up, and Rory with his mummifed mom was officially the most twisted thing ever in her whole life.

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"Deep breath in. Come on."

He'd started sounding like her Denise Austen yoga and pilates DVDs, and if this kept up, she really would have to smite him. He caught her fists in his hands, as if he knew what she was thinking, and his long, grizzly, nasty beard brushed against her knuckles, which really got her torqued. That Rory! That black sheep of the family with his guns and old engines and time in a nut-house and all those yoga goats gamboling around the miserable little metal trailer he "lived" in--on his dead mom's Social Security checks.

What a predicament.

This lunatic who greeted her with a gun barrel would hold her hostage now, and she wasn't going to blame herself for this predicament.

She blamed the cat. Marlin the mummified ginger tom, perched on that old Indian cycle with dead Lenna. Losing him had sent Lenna over the edge in her teen years, making her vulnerable to the persistent Rex Runyan, rotten husband and father of five awful children who haunted DeLorean's childhood. Cousins. What if Marlin had lived longer and Lenna had married a better man?

Rory wouldn't exist. Some nicer, better cousin would exist instead.

Her sobs finally subsided to hiccups. One thing Rory didn't say was the thing Dwayne always said, and she hated it: "Don't cry." Not because he couldn't bear to see her hurting, but because her tears made him uncomfortable. And well they should. He was usually the cause of them, but she'd learned to bottle those tears.

The prairie dogs were underground, possibly right under her ass. The moon had started rising over Lenna's grave. Mausoleum. Whatever the stone-cold tomb should be called.

"I just wanted to talk to her," DeLorean finally choked out. "I really wanted to see Lenna. And not like this."

"Yeah. I miss her more than I ever imagined possible."

To her astonishment, Rory blinked a tear from his blue, blue eyes, and it slid down into the forest of his beard.

"You really ought to shave."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You really ought to take up yoga and get a grip on yourself."

"I hate you."

His lips quirked upward in a hint of a smile. "I never liked you either."

"My mom is dead. I didn't like her, even though I loved her because, hey, we can't help but love our mothers. Dad was easy to hate because he was so mean to her, but I cried for him as if he'd been a great father. I still cry for my mother. All her generation are dying off now, and I wanted to see Lenna, and talk about Mom, and remember the good things from their childhoods. They both loved the same grandma and grandpa. The shared DNA is one thing, but having the same memories of the same old house, the same aunts and uncles and cousins. Nobody else can share those memories. Your husband can't. Your best friends can't. Only your family can, and even if you don't like your family, you have this connection to them that nobody else can recreate."

Rory rose to his feet and pulled her up with him, then stepped back hastily, the way grade school boys do after saying a girl has cooties. "Don't try telling me you and I have some kind of cousin-bond," he said. "That ship sailed years ago."

DeLorean sighed. "Of course I won't. Hell, your hospitality didn't even extend to the use of your bathroom. Welcome to the desert. Why did you chase me down here anyway? I left. You should have danced for joy with your yoga goats."

"Your ugly van was making ugly noises. That was why I followed you. I had a hunch you wouldn't get far."

Her gaze traveled back up the rock wall, resting on his mother's sepulcher. Worlds Gone Awry. Wasn't that the title of a book? If not, maybe she'd write one herself.

"So now what?"

He shrugged. "So now I keep you quiet."

It dawned on her that she'd dropped her pistol after accidentally firing it, and she didn't know where to find it.

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Part One: She Came in through the Kitchen Window - Day 577: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: window

Part Two: "You Little Tart" - Day 585: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: tart

Part Three: Day 588: 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday - Prompt: rodeo
https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-588-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-rodeo

Part Four: Mom's Cousin Lenna the Tart - Part 3 or 4 -Day 591: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: Rule

Part Five: Mom's Cousin Lenna the Lunatic

Part Six: Mom's Cousin Lenna, Part Six-ish - Day 595: 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday - Prompt: trot

Part Seven: Batter My Heart - Mom's Cousin Lenna, Part 7 - Day 598 :5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: Batter

Part Eight: Mom's cousin Lenna + Rory, Part 8, Day 599: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: yoga

Part Nine: Mom's Cousin Lenna, Part 9 - Day 602: 5 Minute Freewrite: Prompt: show me the way home

Part Ten: Mom's Cousin Lenna - Day 605: 5 Minute Freewrite: Prompt: moving to the city

Part Eleven: Mom's Cousin Lenna - Day 606: 5 Minute Freewrite Prompt: nap

Part Twelve: Mom's Cousin Lenna - Day 607: Prompt: Hippo

Part Thirteen: Mom's Cousin Lenna- Day 620 - Freewrite Prompt: Metal Butterfly

Part Fourteen: Mom's Cousin Lenna, Day 621: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: stone rose

Part Fifteen: Mom's Cousin Lenna, Day 622: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: wet carpet

Part Sixteen: [Mom's Cousin Lenna, Day 637: 5 Minute Freewrite: Prompt: hill of prairie dogs]https://steemit.com/freewrite/@carolkean/mom-s-cousin-lenna-day-637-5-minute-freewrite-prompt-hill-of-prairie-dogs

Part Seventeen: [Mom's Cousin Lenna, Day 640: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: awry]

Day 640: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: awry