How It All Goes Down
December 26, 1991
- This letter is about Aunt Helen. For more on her, check out her "Character Analysis." We'll just hit the highlights here.
- The family visits Aunt Helen's grave on the way home every year.
- No happy memories of cow poop here (see last chapter). Aunt Helen was molested as a girl. Charlie won't say who did it, but it wasn't her dad—it was a friend of the family.
- Also, Aunt Helen drank, took a lot of drugs, and was very promiscuous growing up.
- She cleaned herself up, but stayed with Charlie's family a lot. She let Charlie stay up late, and was the only person, other than his parents, who bought him both a birthday and a Christmas gift.
- At Charlie's birthday party on Christmas Eve, the family got a visit from a policeman.
- He told them that Aunt Helen had died in a car accident.
- The last thing she said to Charlie before she left was, "I'm going to buy your birthday present" (2.13.19).
- Charlie has lived with this guilt ever since. He thinks that if she loved him less, she might still be alive.
- Yikes.