The Illusion of Goodbye, Part 2
By Missy SERIES: The Illusion of Goodbye
PARTS: Two oF Two
RATING: PG (For Character death)
DISTRIBUTION: To Squeaky, LW and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Â Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: L&L Romance (a wee bit); C&S (A Wee bit) Comfort/Tragedy
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne explains to Shirley the strength of her bond with Lenny after she returns home very late on the night of Shirley and Carmine's anniversary.
NOTES: Patching in a bit of Lenny's backstory; we know that his mother left him when he was five, and there was mention of a sister with whom he lived (In Hi Neighbor). Later, he was referred to as an only child, but I'm using the Hi Neighbor version of the cannon, using the thought that he has an older sister. This endeavors to explain what happened to his father.
*****

She avoided taking a bus; with nothing more than extreme energy, she made it to St. Michaels Hospital. Her slicker protected adequate shelter, but still her hands were clammy and soaked by the time she reached the front desk.

An efficiently uniformed nurse with thick legs and arms cut off her access to the elevators, "Where are you going, young lady?!"

"I'm here to see my..." She had to really consider whether it was worth saying out loud; deciding it didn't matter, she finished, "..my friend, Lenny. His father's real sick, and he's here all alone.."

The nurse shook her head, "Poor child...where are your parents?"

Laverne bristled at being referred to as a child, "My pop's on a date. You lousy doctors killed my mom a long timea go."

"Oh dear," The nurse sighed, "Well, I'll go look up his files...Now, I'll need a last name."

"Wait," Lavene blurted, "It ain't my friend Len that's sick. It's his dad..." At that moment, the front door to the hospital burst open; a gangly blond figure in a trenchcoat raced toward the nurse.

"My father," The girl gasped, her accent intentionally clipped, "My brother told me that my father's here...do you have an Osbert Kosnowski listed?" She pushed the hood of her jacket back; acres of long, straight blond hair poured from it. That and her blue eyes confirmed for Laverne that this was Lenny's older sister, Elisabeth.

Laverne's memories of the women were much like faded pictures; she remembered Elisabeth as a willow bobby soxer that had watched her and Lenny weekdays after school. When she was twelve, Laverne had been an attendant at the young woman's wedding; at the reception, she and Lenny had danced to "Via Con Dios" (he also tried to sneak his first kiss from her, resulting in a kick to the shins that left him with a tiny scar).

Much, much later, Laverne would learn that Elisabeth had been trying all of her life to break away from the pain of her mother's abandonment; had married a worker at a munitions factory when she turned seventeen because it was the first time she'd been loved with unconditional romance. Guiltily, she'd always believed that her marriage had broken both her father's heart and his wallet; anguish glittered in her blue eyes as she noticed her brother's playmate.

"Laverne?" She asked.

"Len called me," the girl quickly stated, "He said he was waitin' for ya..."

The blond gave the nurse a desperate look, "Please, Ma'am?"

The nurse's eyes had clouded with tears, "According to these papers, it's an urgent matter. He's resting on the fifth floor, room 491."

Elisabeth turned and rushed to an open elevator, "Come on, little sister," She said, holding open the door, "Pappa's waiting."

A look of confusion crossed Laverne's face, she pointed to herself, mouthing 'Me?!'. Lenny's sister nodded; Dragging her slicker behind her, Laverne entered the elevator before the nurse could utter a single protest.

****

"...Pappa's always had a weak heart," Elisabeth explained as she half-dragged Laverne down the hall by her wrist (Lenny developed a similar habit years later, when Laverne neglected to move fast enough for him. Laverne would find this secretly amusing). "After mom left..." She shook her head, "I just made things worse for him, didn't I?" She looked into Laverne's solemn eyes, "I shouldn't be askin' stuff like this. You're too young to understand."

"I'm sixteen!" Laverne blurted out, "Whyda people keep tryin' ta treat me like a baby?!" She instantly cooled her temper as she came to a door marked 491.

Elisabeth handed Laverne her rainjacket, "Please wait here; I'll send Lenny out," She urged, the disappeared through the door.

Without a choice, Laverne settled into an empty waiting area, steps down from where Lenny and his sister now awaited their father's probable death.

An overwhelming sensation of coldness overcame Laverne; everything seemed to familiar, reflective of her mother's death. She couldn't remember if this was indeed the same ward; maybe she had died floors away, doors down. She'd been in the hospital for such a long time, but, conversely, Laverne had been so young when her mother had passed away, and much of it was blocked into nothingness by her mind.

She came to her feet when Lenny appeared at the other end of the hallway, walking toward her slowly. The closer he came, the redder his eyes appeared to be, and the thicker the tear tracks down his cheeks.

Laverne's expression remained as blank as possible as she looked into Lenny's face, "Len? How're you doin'?"

He looked straight into her eyes and burst into tears.

With an "aww", Laverne wrapped her arms around him (A difficult task; she couldn't quite reach around the broadness of his shoulders) comfortingly. For the longest time, they stood that way; her head drifted to his shoulder and, without realizing that his head was full of the grease she'd often despised at a distance, began to stoke his hair.

When he lifed his head, a bit of the anguish in his eyes had lifted.

"Yer nose is runnin'," Laverne pointed out, picking out a Kleenex from a coffee table and gently blotting his cheeks and lips.

His expression was pained as he said, "He just collapsed, Vernie; he just fell down...an..." He shook his head, "I can't lose my dad, too.."

"Len...even if he dies, you ain't losin' him," Her arms fit around his shoulders with sweet completion, "This ain't goodbye, Len. Goodbye ain't really real when someone dies, 'cuz they're still here."

"Howdya know that?" He muttered darkly.

"'Cuz Shirl said so." She said, with complete faith.

Lenny's reaction was tasteful; he didn't laugh in her face. "D'ya think yer mom's still here?"

Laverne shivered in his arms; thinking about her mother still felt painful. "I dunno, Len." She managed a smile and stroked his cheek,, "I guess I just feel it.."

He laughed; an unusually tiny noise for him. Both noted a sense of shared emotion between them; eyes locked, they leaned in...

A most natural kiss, under quite unnatural circumstances. It was silent, gentle, an expression of gratitude, perhaps. She would never know. They drew apart quickly.

"LENNY!" came his sister's voice, ringing down the hallway. Abruptly he let go of Laverne's hands and ran to his sister. With that, several doctors and a nurse came rushing through the corridors, into the room of Osbert Kosnowski. Laverne knew that this was it; Lenny's dad was dying. Feeling useless, she crumbled down into her chair.

She reflected on Lenny's father, whom she'd always noted him as a kind, decent man. Before Lenny's mother had taken off, it had been the man's job to give emotional support to his children; the obviously unstable woman had been unable to provide anything for the children but rudimentary care.

Little flashes of memory came to her; Mr. Kosnowski sitting out on the steps of their building, listening to Lenny's first musical stirrings emerge; keeping watchful eye on he and Squiggy as the two of them did one insane thing or another. She didn't know him as well as his son, but if he were as sweet and as good as her friend, then the world was losing a good man.

Hours later, when Frank DeFazio came to get his daughter, he found her fast asleep, holding onto a pair of raincoats.

"Muffin?" Laverne was woken by his whisper, "Ya gotta come home now." She frowned up at her father, hating to move after being woken up.

"What timeisit?" She muttered.

"Four," He said. She placed Elisabeth's coat on the chairs behind her; in an almost dream state, her father helped her into her raincoat. They walked down the dim, gloomy hallway in silence.

She almost passed right by room 491; but she saw something that stopped her dead still in the middle of the hallway. It was an image that burned itself inside of her mind with a permanence that still haunted her.

Lenny's father, lying perfectly still in the hospital bed; a look of peace rested on his face. His daughter sat in a chair, weeping silently into the chest of her husband. But Lenny himself pulled hardest at the strings of her heart; at the other side of his father's bed, he sat, holding his father's hand in both of his own.

"Is Mr. Kosnowski..."

"Yeah," Said her father, his voice solemn, "He died."

In silence, they continued their journey home. It was something that her father would never discuss with her again, but it was one of the most deeply moving moments of Laverne's life. The entire way, her sole thought was how worthless her worries over beauty had been.

***

"...You were there?" Shirley asked, awed and sympathetic, "Oh, Laverne, you never told me..."

Laverne nodded her head, "Ya remember tha rest; Elisabeth finished raisin' Len and we all went to tha funeral togetha." Laverne sighed, "And that's why I sneak out on the night you and Carmine're out there celebrating yer anniversary. Ya never knew anythin' because you were always late." She put her hairbrush down, walking to her bed, "Len's always liked me 'cause of that. At least that's one reason why he does." She laid down.

"I can't believe you never told me that story," Shirley sighed as she, too, entered her bed, "Poor Len; I should bake him a cake or somethin'."

"Nah; Squig'd just end up eatin' it," She smirked, "I gotta get some sleep. Night, Shirl."

"Night Vernie." The bedside lamp went off with a click.

Laverne remained awake, even as her best friend drifted off to sleep. Even after that long explanation, she didn't really believe that Shirley understood what an impact that night had had on her.

Of course, that was one of the few things that Shirley didn't know about her.

The other: on that night, in a moment of pure emotion, Lenny hadn't been the only one experiencing his first kiss..

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