Revised Image of a Hero

Mary Karr’s view of her own sister in The Liar’s Club, has grown into a positive light than in the beginning of the memoir. Lecia, Mary’s sister, is just like any other sister; she knocks Mary down to get attention from her mother (265). However, through the traumatic events that occur, Lecia becomes prevalently an adult figure to take care of Mary and herself when neither parents could.

Lecia had thought logically when Mary and herself were left to chose who they wanted to live with. When “Lecia’s gaze went very level, as if she’d seen this choice coming across the far sky like a weather front” (193), Lecia knew that this was coming; she was realistic and knew that her parents could get divorced and coming straight down to it, she already planned for this to happen. Most children try to ignore when their parents seem to be going downhill, but Lecia prepared for it. She thought it only logical that they would stay with her mother because if they “left Mother by herself, she’d get in capital-T Trouble” (193). It made sense after their mother being Nervous and knew that their father would survive better without them. Lecia was the one that said “Let’s go back in there and break it to them” (193) and was the one who organized what to be done because Lecia had to be the strong one to help make the decision and to be able to tell them who they wanted to live with was, I could imagine, a very difficult thing to do; Mary was in no condition to do so because she wanted to “curl up in a ball” (192) when she found out the news. Lecia was the one to be an adult and lead her sister through that storm.

When in Colorado, Mother decides one night after drinking, of course, decides to pull out a gun she thought she needed to protect herself in the disgusting town of Antelope. This drinking spell made Mother threaten to shoot Hector, the step dad, after he himself had been drinking and was trying to pay Lecia to play “America the Beautiful,“ but refused. This made Hector call Lecia a “bitch;“ Mother’s nervous came to the point where she really wanted to kill Hector, but because Mary blocked him with her body, somehow stalled the murdering mind. Lecia’s valiant efforts were focused on saving Mary and herself by staring “up with an expression that struck me [Mary] as lawyerly, like Perry Mason’s at the jury box” (251). And once that didn’t work the following quote struck me as valiant:

“She was off on another tack. The look in her brown eyes under the shiny blond shelf of bangs was no longer set. It was weary. And the accent she used next was pure Texan… She was buddying up, appealing to Mother’s fury, which she’s apparently adjudged immovable” (252).

Lecia then offered herself to help cover Hector up, but instead of doing it with Mary, she did it for her. “When Lecia took her place beside me looking wholly empty of herself. She was telling me to run. But in her pass-the butter voice” (253). This “pass-the-butter voice” was Lecia’s way of concentration as she was trying to be calm through the whole situation with their Mother’s gun pointed towards them; her goal was to make her to go get help and wasn’t noticed when she ran towards the Janisches’ house.

Furthermore, Lecia stuck out as the strong, static character that Mary need for support. “Her sudden solidity and power, the sheer force of her will” (251), was pronounced and concludes Mary’s want of a relationship as to the lonesomeness her parents made her feel throughout the divorce. Through these traumatic events, Lecia became parent-like when she needed to be. Lecia became the adult Mary needed at such a young age that never would again be viewed as a child through her eyes.