RE: Trailer Trash 49 pt 2

Ominous quiet filled the cab of his truck as it rumbled down the Springton roads and brought them back down the hill into their trailer park. Alan knew his wife was cross at him over the whole Tabitha and Lisa hoo-haw, but if he didn’t stand up for his sister-in-law, then who would? It rankled how Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Macintire were so quick to dismiss Lisa’s innocence as impossible, how quick they were to judge and just see the worst in people.

He’d feared that coming into that big lump of settlement money would change Tabitha, and it seemed like his every fear was confirmed—and worse. It honestly hurt seeing how quickly the girls colors had changed, to see her sitting on the other side of the table from her family now and openly despising her simple upbringing. Was simple really so bad? Tabitha had always been happy before. She had a bunch of cousins to run around and play with, friends at shool, a warm roof over her head and plenty of food on the table—a loving family at home.

“I just don’t understand it,” Mr. Moore remarked to himself, shaking his head.

They were getting back real late—Mrs. Moore was in a mood and had insisted they go right around on another shopping trip. He knew the why, but was smart enough to hold his peace as he followed her up and down the aisles of the big Walmart all over again. That snooty woman Tabitha was staying with had made a big fuss about all sorts of ludicrous things she was spoiling her own little daughter with, and she’d obviously just been doing it to stir up bad feelings between them.

It worked, because of course everything with those people was money money money all the time, and now his wife had it in her head that she needed to buy back her daughter’s affection with more Christmas presents. The trip through the store hadn’t done nothing but frustrate Mrs. Moore more and more, and from the set of her jaw when they returned to the parking lot empty-handed he’d been sure she was about to go off on him.

He didn’t want to fight about it.

They lived in a material world now, and who knew—maybe he really was just behind the times. Everything was all about spending money and having a bunch of stuff, without much thought put into whether anyone even needed all that sorts of nonsense. Why would Tabitha need an expensive typewriter or IBM computer? They couldn’t afford it, and Tabitha had all of her story-writing stuff down in writing already. Was there really any kind of need to take all those pages and pages and just copy them into computer databit whatevers to print out? Even if there was, she could do that at a school or a library somewhere. Getting important papers printed out somewhere cost ten cents a page—the idea of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a whole personal computer setup with all the expensive little hookups and accessories and doodads you needed for it to run seemed like sheer vanity.

Really makes me wonder what in the hell was goin’ through Danny’s head, tryin’ to just take all those computers, Mr. Moore thought as the vehicle slowly lurched over the speedbump on their street and then pulled into the familiar spot in front of their trailer.

Guilt and frustration went through him again at seeing that Danny’s Oldsmobile was still missing. He’d intended on looking after it while his brother served out his time and thought about the mess he’d gotten himself into, but then this whole kerfluffle with the police happened and now it was at the impound lot. Getting it back was gonna be a whole big affair, because Lisa hadn’t had the mind to give him the papers for it for safekeeping back then in October.

Well, they’re all gonna feel pretty stupid once they realize Lisa’s innocent of all them trumped up drug charges, he thought to himself with a wry smile. Maybe then they’ll be trippin’ all over themselves to try an’ make amends, sort out the impound nonsense for us. It was the same once all those people realized what was what with the whole Tabitha thing withdrawing from school.

With his outlook improving, Mr. Moore switched off the ignition and unbuckled his seatbelt. He was just getting ready to open his door and step out into the December air when he caught his wife’s look.

“Alan,” Shannon made no move to get out of her seat. “Do you understand why Tabitha left us to go stay with that other family?”

Whew boy, here we go then, Mr. Moore suppressed a sigh.

He rested his wrists on the steering wheel for a moment as he figured out how best to console her.

“She’s growin’ up and goin’ through those teenage phases,” Mr. Moore explained. “I think mayhap she’s got it in her mind that there’s somethin’ wrong with—you know, with livin’ in a trailer park, when there ain’t nothing wrong with it. Somebody musta said something, or one o’ her friends teased her, and it mighta just rubbed Tabby the wrong way. We’ve got a mobile home, yeah. And her room she’s grew up in, yeah, it’s just an itty-bitty thing. We don’t have all kinds of money to throw around on this and that like them Macintires do.”

He glanced at his wife in the passenger’s seat, but she was staring at him an incredulous expression.

“Oh, c’mon,” Mr. Moore shrugged and opened his hands from where they rested in a what can you do sort of gesture. “You know well as I do that she’s had her struggles lately. She’s different—our Tabby’s special, an’ that didn’t sit right with some of the other kids her age maybe. Growin’ up’s always gonna be tough. Right now she’s got her mind set on—I dunno, on separatin’ herself off from her roots and tryin’ to make herself out to be like she’s different now. In with the cool crowd, in with—you know. Havin’ money and clothes and mall fashion and all that jazz.”

“So,” Mrs. Moore continued to stare at him. “So—you don’t understand what’s going on? At all?!”

“Alright, okay,” Mr. Moore shook his head, looking out across the row of trailers lining the street. “Here we go again, huh?”

“She was right about Lisa, an’ everyone is saying so,” Mrs. Moore hissed out. “She was right. About—about everything with her. Lisa had a thing full of heroin, they caught her with it. All that money we gave her for that piece of shit car that didn’t run went right into her nose, or into her arm, or, or—however heroin goes, I don’t know, Alan!”

“There’s just no way Lisa would—”

“No—stop, STOP!” His wife hollered over him. “Lisa never gave a damn about those kids, she never gave a damn about nobody but herself, an’ if you’re still tellin’ yourself otherwise, you’re a goddamn fool.”

“Hon—”

“She struck her own child right there in front of us, and over what?!” Mrs. Moore spat out. “Over nothing. Just ‘cause he was irritatin’ her! Well, guess what, Alan? Kids are gonna irritate sometimes, and if you just—if you just backhand them every time they do? That’s not raisin’ up a kid. That’s more like abuse! Those four boys are not h-her, her belongings she can do whatever she damn well pleases with, they’re children, and not a one of us but Tabitha did a damned thing to protect them from her.

“Tabitha was worried, Tabitha was watchful, and when she went to you ‘splaining that she thought Lisa was doin’ drugs? What do you do? Nothing. Because the perfect pretty Lisa in your head can’t do drugs, because ‘oh, a sensible person wouldn’t do that,’ because she’s got family, an’ so she knows better. She doesn’t know better, Alan! For Christ’s sake!”

“Alright, alright, calm down—”

“No! No!” Shannon slapped his arm away from her. “You listen to me! Every time someone points out to you how insensible Lisa is all the time, you go on and say ‘oh, well she made a mistake.’ It was the same with your brother Danny! ‘Oh, he made a mistake.’ Lisa was doing heroin, Alan! All that money she took, all o’ her comin’ back an’ askin’ for more money, it was for heroin! Your lousy brother, stealing all that stuff—heroin, Alan! That’s not an accident! That’s not just a mistake!”

There was no stopping her now, so Mr. Moore didn’t even try to—he needed to let her get all of this out of her system so she could calm down. She’d been working herself up about the whole crazy mess more and more as the days went on, and a big part of him worried that she wouldn’t come to her senses.

“You’re a goddamn fool, Alan,” Mrs. Moore wept bitter tears as she continued to glare at him from the other side of the truck’s cab. “Tabby, she didn’t leave ‘cause o’ money. She didn’t leave ‘cause she’s goin’ through phases! She left because you’re a goddamn fool, and more an’ more? I think I must be one, too.”

“You’re not a fool, honey,” Mr. Moore assured her. “When everything gets figured out, I think—”

“You keep saying that,” his wife huffed. “You keep on just thinking this is all some big goddamn misunderstanding someone else is gonna sort out. It’s not. An’ that’s more and more clear to everyone the longer this drags on. I’ve talked with Laurie about it, you know? ‘Bout how your heart’s just so much bigger than your head. That you’ve got all this, this blind trust for people, even where it don’t belong. Laurie said it, said there’s that saying—trust, but verify.

“Tabitha told you Lisa was doin’ drugs, and then you just shook your head at that and trusted that she wasn’t. Without verifying, without any sort of due diligence. To you, that’s someone else’s job to figure out, the police maybe, the courts. Because you’re family, so you can just trust everything blindly. Not your problem, right! This wasn’t even the first time this has happened, Alan! Tabitha told you that Taylor girl pushed her off of that trampoline jumper. If you’d gone in and looked into all that, maybe Tabby wouldn’t have been bullied so bad at school, maybe she’d have not gotten hurt again and again. But, you just blew it off. We both did, didn’t we? Kids playin’ around, it’ll sort itself out! Except it didn’t, Alan! It got worse and worse and worse for her, an’ all this after she told you about it, told US about it! She told you someone pushed her, she told the both of us at the dinner table how she’d been bein’ bullied.

“Both of us just, well, we refused to believe it. Trusted that everything’d work itself out. Or someone else would look into it—leave all that to the school board, the teachers or whoever. That’s their job, right? Never our problem. We never did jack shit about anything any time Tabitha came to us for help. That’s why we’re goddamn fools, that’s why Tabitha left the minute a better family than us opened their doors to her, and Alan? In my heart, I’m not even sure she should come back.”

“Now don’t you say that,” Mr. Moore told her in a tired voice. “It’s been a night, and you’ve got yourself all riled up over this whole thing again. Sure, some of them things seem clearer when you’re to where you’re lookin’ back on it all. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, they say that, too. Let’s get you inside, honey, you’re liable to catch cold out her like this, we both are, okay? We’ve done the best we can as parents, and sometimes, well, things just—”

“I’m going inside,” Mrs. Moore said abruptly, turning to face him again as if she hadn’t heard a word he’d just said. “I’m—I’m going to clean the house. Go through the fridge and do up meals and prepare them up for the week like Tabitha did. Check through my old clothes and see if any of it even fits anymore—tomorrow I’m going out, I’m going out and finding a job. I don’t even care where! There’s all sorts of signs up for seasonal help, I’ll work at the mall, if I have to. I’m done being fat and miserable and just waiting around the house for all my problems to magically fix themselves on their own!

“I’m done being a goddamn fool, Alan.”

( Previous, 49 pt 1 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, 49 pt 3 )

/// Fun rant monologue to write, and she should be hitting a lot of the points readers want to hammer him with.

These have been difficult character beats to write, because I tend to write multifaceted characters, and Mr. Moore really is not multifaceted. Not every character has hidden depths, just as honestly speaking every person does not. He's a painfully simple man, and he hasn't even changed much at all since the parts back in Chapter 35 where readers loved him. The context just finally started to expose his faults in the worst way; the Moores were passive parents, at best Alan would show bark (but no bite), going around yelling and cussing and threatening people, without actually doing anything about any of it.

He was an enabler, and one that over the course of years allowed all of the worst traits in his wife to emerge and then stagnate there. I will dial things back so that we can see him in better supportive contexts again soon, but I think things needed to get to about this sort of rock bottom point for Mrs. Moore to really wake the fuck up and realize it's time to restart her life. Not easy for a shut-in to do!

It was honestly tempting to have that just be a hard pivot her life took back in chapter 15 where she starts connecting to Tabitha, or chap 22 where she has another fairly big epiphany, but it seemed like a big cop out if I just had her reform all at once. Actively fixing your life isn't a quick movie montage and it isn't a magical overnight transformation—it's a grueling long process, it takes time and painful lessons and setbacks. That was always one of the do-over fic tropes I wanted to subvert, and hopefully it's been frustrating but not too frustrating to watch the struggle play out.

Gonna be back to working on AnimeCon next for a bit!