Induction

As we peddled our bikes home from the beach, we played the lottery game. We took turns telling each other what we would buy if we won the Megabucks. We decided we would buy up all the land on an entire street and build our own community for our friends and family. We spent the next twenty minutes telling each other what we’d put in the community. Pools for everyone and a central pool to gather around for family barbecues. Jake always had such a wild imagination, so his contribution was a miniature golf course. I could get behind that in the cold months, but there was no way I would stand outside in the July heat for it.

“Don’t forget Thanksgiving is coming up next month,” Jake reminded me. “It’s our turn to host.”

Since we switched off with his parents, I realized he was right. It was our turn. While I was an only child, Jake was the oldest of three. His sister Meg was off at school studying psychology. It felt kind of weird to be thirty-seven and in college at the same time as his twenty-one-year-old sister. Their brother, Vinny, followed in Jake’s footsteps and joined the army after a bad break-up. Vinny was a big teddy bear. His goofy personality made him easy to be around.

Madly in love with his high school sweetheart, Vinny vowed their relationship would defy the statistics. For a while we thought he was right. Lena was a year younger than him and still in high school when he went off to Methodist College in North Carolina to pursue a degree as a physical trainer. Vinny had always been a brick shithouse. The guy was six-foot four and two-hundred and fifty pounds of solid mass. His high school football career landed him a free ride to Methodist on an athletic scholarship.

Lena had one of those families you’d expect to see on Jerry Springer. A horrible role model, her mother had a constant string of boyfriends, each more deplorable than the last. She spent her nights in an alcohol-induced haze and wasting her measly earnings on pot and booze instead of the bills. Due to her mother’s failure to pay the rent on time, Lena had found herself living out of the boxes that she refused to unpack since she knew the cycle would just repeat. The final straw was when her mother collected her car insurance payment and it never made it to the bank. After she got pulled over and her car was impounded, Lena moved in with my in-laws, taking Vinny’s old room.

The year apart proved to be agony for him and after the semester ended he moved home and enrolled in the community college for his paramedic license. The two lovebirds were anxious to get a place of their own, and my mother-in-law helped find them the perfect starter home.

Lena’s credit was nonexistent, so the Rossi’s offered to cosign with Vinny. They even kicked in the down payment to get them started off. The first year was bliss. Vinny and Lena were affectionate, and one was never too far from the other. They got one of those drooling boxers that reminded me of the dog from Turner and Hooch; we’re talking some serious drool—solid strings of ooze that could fly across the room when the dog shook its head and just stick to a wall like cooked pasta. Vinny proposed, and while Lena accepted, she insisted on a long engagement.

The first indication of trouble in paradise shone when Lena began to skip family holidays or not talk to anyone when she did grace us with her presence. She could be found sitting on the sofa, arms crossed, and a sour puss on her face. Still, my in-laws treated her as one of their own. She wanted a new car but couldn’t finance it with her credit, so they once again overextended themselves and cosigned the loan for her. The agreement was that she would make all the payments.

Then, boom, Vinny’s life went into a tailspin. She left him with the house and dog. Just packed a bag, three days before Christmas, and walked out. The bitch even defaulted on her car payments and creditors began hounding my in-laws. As if that wasn’t bad enough, two days later the mailman delivered a confirmation of an upcoming cruise in her name. The second passenger was Vinny’s best friend, Don.

So, unable to make the mortgage on his own, he sold the house in a short sale and enlisted in the army. That was about four years ago. With the name Lena a distant memory, Vinny was pretty tight lipped about his dating life with all of us but Jake. Even though they were ten years apart in age, they were best friends.

From what little Jake told me, Vinny was playing the field… a lot. When on leave, he would come over and they spent the entire night playing Madden on the PlayStation and the two of them would laugh the entire time. His brother was due home on leave around Thanksgiving and would be staying for a couple months before shipping out again.

Jake and I turned onto our street and stopped at the end of the driveway to empty the mailbox.