Who Do You Trust?

My neighbor Sharon died 3 years ago this month. She was a scrawny little whip of a woman, born on a reservation in Oregon that no one ever heard of until it got a casino and started providing stipends and health/dental coverage to all its registered members. She loved the Giants and the 49ers and had hats and jackets with logos of each. She had a Lhasa Apso named Brown Sugar, who subsisted entirely on Milk Bonz and other treats. If Sharon was awake, she had a cigarette lit and the country station playing on her radio. I knew her by rare sightings for at least fifteen years before we became speaking acquaintances.
I really miss seeing her parade Sugar up and down the block until the dog's bowels condescended to move. I miss watching her manicure her tiny little front garden, where the lighted reindeer stand at Christmas. I miss that little twitch of her front curtain that demonstrated she was there, just behind it, keeping an eye on the neighborhood.
The past few months, I've wondered whether she was still watching the neighborhood, from some place beyond the clouds. I kind of hope not, since she'd have had to see her kids, the ones she'd carefully put the house in trust for, foreclosed on and literally out on the street. Not what she'd intended. And now you have to wonder whether she could have - or maybe did - see it coming.
I know she had no use for Diesel, that sorry female who chased her son, RJ, around. Fat tart in tank tops and flap down overall shorts in all kinds of weather, dressed to show her massive thighs and her ever-increasing florid tats. Kind of gal who dries out in jail a couple times a year while her passle of kids get farmed out to their daddies. Considerate lass, who makes 40 phone calls an hour all night long to her boyfriend's house when they've had a row, knowing that he won't answer the phone but his mother, lacking caller ID or an answering machine, will. Also known for her penchant for smashing car windows up and down the block when she's sailing in front of the winds of rage. Charmer. She became the Lady of the Manor, after Sharon died.
Sharon's oldest girl, Bobby, got the thankless role of executor/trustee. That made RJ so mad that he wouldn't allow her access to the house or functionability in any other regard, while he fought through the court (and lost the battle but won the war by other means) Her other girl, Daff, lives somewhere in rural Texas and didn't even come for the funeral, just held out her hand until someone put money in it. And brother Mac, having blown off his job with the Teamsters because his agoraphobia kept wiggling through his brain and his mother's illness gave him an excuse, capitulated to RJ's leadership and shrank the fat off his bones with ingestable substances. And Tree, the oldest of the kids, moved herself and her young boyfriend in with the brothers and tried to lead a regular sort of life, featuring work and regular meals.
What none of them seemed to learn to do was pay bills. It's doubtful that bills ever got opened, probably on the theory that what you can't see doesn't exist. Bobby says it wasn't just utility bills and mortgage statements that went unanswered. Sharon had left each child $20,000 in an insurance policy but RJ and Mac wouldn't open the agent's letters or answer his calls.
The axe fell on April Fools' Day. A batallion of large, slow-moving, long-armed guys flooded out of the back of a high-sided truck, swarmed up the front steps and began interior demolition. By noon, the toilets, shower stalls, kitchen appliances and plumbing pipes were heaped in the back of the truck. The garage door was wide open, displaying the spectacular, floor-to-ceiling accumulation of car tools, car parts and god knows what else. And the family was gone.
We neighbors knew there was difficulty. Diesel was not a ladylike sort, when confronted with opposition. Several times the house was dark for days until a PG&E truck came to reinstall wiring. The landline phone number was disconnected.
Last December, I saw RJ on the street, trying to revive a gasping, gurgling pickup truck. I asked him if he'd made his Christmas list yet. He said "Only thing I'd wish for is a mother and a father."
I don't know where they've gone, Sharon, those rowdy boys of yours. I hope you didn't lose a minute of heaven, scrutinizing the debacle.