The Beasts: A Winter Tale, continuing the story begun in The Old

[ChrisGibson]

THE BEASTS



A WINTER TALE




P A R T
O N E

VOLK




O N E

CHRISTMAS
EVE




Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

-Friedrich Nietzsche



She woke up in horror.
After Marabeth Strauss had allowed her breathing to calm down and sat up in the bed, letting her heart settle, she reflected that this wasn’t such a bad thing. So often in the last year she had awaken in anger. And the anger was what terrified her. No one should be as angry as she was. No one should have such violent dreams. She was afraid to recount them, especially now. Afraid to think of the things she said to her mother and father in those dreams that, for Christ’s sake, a woman well past her first youth should be over by now.
The anger dreams that featured Calvin made her feel better. There was no ambiguity in her relationship to her ex husband, just pure hatred, and there was something comforting about that which was pure.
The sky was grey and this was Christmas Eve. This was the fourth day of a much needed winter break, the fourth day she woke up in delicious ten o’clock in the morning, movie people wake up time wonder. She climbed out of bed and was embarrassed to admit her feet hurt. She’d need better shoes. She was much too young for this shit. Her tits sweated and stuck to her, and she resented this bullshit, wondered about wearing a bra in bed, told herself fuck, and refused to go to the bathroom until she had half hobbled out of her bedroom and down the hall of the apartment on Birmingham Street to flick on the coffee pot, wait for it to make its first gurgles and prove it was still working.
On the pot, thinking that when she was done she would return to bed for a few more minutes of deserved sleep, and wiping her brown hair out of her face, Marabeth wondered about the dream.
“Fuck,” she murmured. “Get toilet paper.”
She felt the tirade coming again, saw her thoughts leaving behind the thing that had most troubled her for a new and more common thing. Women who were not feminist, what the fuck? She was so tired of them. In a world where every time you walked into the fucking bathroom you had to use toilet paper, a negligible expense for men, in a world where a box or two maybe of tampons were necessary every month to get you through your adulthood, how could so many women be so damn oblivious? How could…? Enough. More of that later. It was Christmas Eve, and soon she would be in her house full of good Christian cousins and… but the dream.
To remember that man wiped out all of her feminist ranting, wiped out every issue she had with her kin. A man, tall and robust, fortyish or maybe fifty, with blond, almost icy blond hair, and flashing blue eyes, a square jaw. His hair was definitely short. He wore a vest or… maybe it was a jerkin. She drummed that word up from the days when her brother played D and D. On her back, back in bed while the coffee pot burbled,, she pieced together the details of the dream and she could see the green tall pines, could see the thin clearness of the blue sky with no clouds, could see snow covered, high hills, the slopes going down into blue crevasses which slid into endless blackness.
And had this frightened her? Because she had been fightened, and she did not know how. Had the man frightened her? How was it possible? She could not remember him doing anything. She could remember nothing happening.
Now she was blinking, and she turned over to look at the clock. What the...? But how could she have slept for another hour? How could she be finally, honestly, truly waking up so ridiculously close to 11:30, having slept the whole morning away?
“I am a child,” Marabeth said, getting up again and plodding to the kitchen and coffee pot in anger. She planned to sit on the little sofa under the great picture window, her back toward Brimingham Street, and her face to the door, and chain smoke her way to answering the question of why it seemed so impossible for her to make a success of her life, why she was nowhere near being a grown up.
“The thing I can’t quite master,” she stated, noting to herself that this coffee was too bitter, but not willing to get up and put anymore milk or sugar in it, “is to be realistic about where I am in life and how to not feel sorry for myself.”
She’d had a different vision for her life.
“Everyone does,” she realized.
“But no, that’s not true. Kristian Strauss’s vision for his life was pretty much what it was supposed to be, better if you counted those rough moments. In her family people did what they were supposed to. The whole thing had been Marabeth had not done what she was supposed to. Going to art school was not what you were supposed to do, but for the love of God stay in it once you get there! The years of boredom and depression that resulted in dropping out and spending all of her money to go to New York sounded better as an adventure, as a background to a colorful life than they really had been.
“And if you think about, no one in New York, no one who was born there would be impressed by my running off to it.”
Then again, they way those assholes were, they probably would be impressed. New York was the only place she’d been to that believed in its own myth.
“Too many Marvel movies. Too many Ghostbusters. Too many superheroes,” she murmured.
And then, in the end, you had to finish college eventually, if not because there would be no good jobs, then at least because this is what people in her family did. It didn’t do to think too much about it. Those last two years in school, which had been enjoyable, but weird because she felt too old and she felt like it was a place that didn’t fit her, that she should have left years ago, also felt like they would never have fit her, no matter how young she’d been.
“It’s really the only think that explains Calvin.”
There he was in her senior sem class, all pale orange hair and long legs and faded jeans that fit his legs and outlined his thighs and led to what she estimated was a nice package. And she couldn’t believe she was thinking this way. She was so into her own head and into her own pursuit of happiness and truth and whatever the fuck had gotten her twenty-umph years old, heavily in debt and working as a receptionist in a candy factory. But now she gravitated to the only other person in that room her age who also seemed to feel like a fish out of water, and then they were together, and he had the most magnificent eyes.
Calvin’s family was Baptist. His father was a preacher. He sang hymns under his breath. She was surprised to learn he’d been with several girls before her. But he was her first. Looking back, Marabeth realized, as she stubbed out the cigarette, this had been why she’d married him.
“We’ll go to Father O’Brien next week,” her grandmother had said.
“Grandma,” Marabeth had never thought this would be an issue, never thought she would be worried about it, never thought, to be honest, that she would be married, “Calvin’s not a Catholic.”
“Well, maybe he can become one.”
“Or maybe,” Marabeth’s mother raised an eyebrow and looked at her mother-in-law skeptically, “it doesn’t matter, and we can work around that.”
“I think it will matter,” Marabeth said. “I think his family is Baptist. I think his dad’s a pastor.”
Kris laughed outloud and she frowned at her brother.
“What?” he said. “How are you going to go to a Baptist church every Sunday? How are you going to praise the lord and wear a big ole hat?”
“Are you serious?” Marabeth demanded while Kris clapped his hands in rhythm and swayed, then said, “You can scarcely go to a forty-five minute mass once a week at Saint Ursula’s. Please, Mara! You’d better not have a Baptist wedding, or you’ll misrepresent yourself to that guy’s whole family.”
When the phone rang, she murmured, “Thank God,” and put down the cigarette and picked up the flat phone on the coffee table.
“Good morning, Joyce.”
“You sound happy.”
“Do I?” Marabeth said.
“You actually sound radiant.”
“That is such a surprise. I was feeling unradiant.”
“Do you need me to come around?’
“I always need you to come around,” Marabeth said, “But it’s not like that. I was just taking stock of my life.”
“That’s never a good idea,” Joyce said and Marabeth burst out laughing.
“Look, I called to see if you want to go Christmas shopping.”
“No, I do not.”
“Well, then I called to see if you would go Christmas shopping because I do not want to brave the mall alone.”
“When you put it that way,” Marabeth said, uncurling herself, “I can do that. Can we smoke in the mall? Have they finally made that legal?”
“Damnit, I wish.”
“So like,” Marabeth stretched and looked at her coffee longingly, “on a scale of one to ten, how much Christmas shopping have you gotten done?”
“I’d put it at a solid zero. You?”
“I’d put it at I’ve been looking around in my apartment at all the nice shit no one knew I had, and wrapping it up and boxing it. By the way, I’m glad you called and took me out of my head. You know, I was thinking about my wedding.”
“Yeah,” Joyce said, leaving it at that.
Marabeth respected the way Joyce refused to ever say anything negative about Caleb or her marriage. It was as if, with Marabeth having acknowledged its disaster, it was no need for Joyce to say a thing.
“When will you be here?” Marabeth asked. I need to get ready?”
“Well, I need to get ready too, so I’m thinking I need to shower and brush my teeth and.. a half hour?’
“That doesn’t even make any sense. You mean an hour.”
“I think forty-five minutes.”
“Okay., I’ll be ready in forty-five minutes,” Mara said, silently mouthing, “I’ll be ready in an hour.”
“See you soon.”
“Bye.”
Mara hung up.
“This bitch is never on time.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great start to this new part of this huge story! Marabeth seems like she is going to be an interesting character. I look forward to getting to know her better and seeing how she interacts with others. Excellent writing and I look forward to the next portion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

So, we're into something very new and an almost new group of characters. We're about to meet some very different people and move into a very different part of the story. In fact, it will be some time again before we meet many of the people we just left behind,

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE BEASTS

An hour and a half later, looking down from her third story window onto O’Connor Street, Marabeth murmured, “This bitch is never on time.”
Her phone rang, and she didn’t trouble to answer it but slipped it into the pocket of her red coat as she slipped her tamishanter on and then, strapping her purse over her shoulder and slipping her hands into her pockets, left the apartment, heading down the three flights of back stair in the large old buildling, and coming out the side.
“So, I’m a little bit late,” Joyce began,
“You know what?” Marabeth said, “It doesn’t even matter.”
Joyce pulled out of her space and drove to the corner waiting for the traffic to pass on Birmingham before heading up Day.
Joyce three back her head and sang:
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!”
Marabeth joined in
“Everywhere you look!”
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in every store
But the prettiest sight to see, is the holly that will be
On your own front door!”

“See, that’s the thing I love about you,” Joyce said. “Who else would join in that song with me? People are so fucking gloomy but—”
Joyce rolled down her window and gave a loud scream that startled the driver in the old blue Taurus riding closest to her.
“It’s Christmas Goddamnit!”
In Joyce’s presence, looking up and down Day Road as they traveled north, Marabeth felt an exhilaration in the the black trees and white sky, in the snow crusted streets that she usually did not. She was momentarily and not unpleasantly reminded of the dream this morning, of snow upon snow, of snow glinting with white and silver and blue crystals, and the long shadows of great beautiful…
“Was your mind on Christmas?” Joyce asked.
“A little bit,” Marabeth said. And then she said, “Well, no, actually, it was on this dream I had this morning.”
“Share!” Joyce said so enthusiastically, suddenly looking at her so intently that Marabeth wondered if she would see the the red light as they met Alvington Street.
“Well, not like Christmas at all,” Marabeth said. “Except that it was snowing. Well, I correct that. I wasn’t snowing at all. The snow had happened. But who knows when? It was like being in the mountains. Like in Heidi or something. And so beautiful! Oh, much more beautiful than this.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Shut up. It was the whitest… No! The purest snow is better. You looked at it and you could see all the colors, all the sharp individual crystals under the sun. And the sky was so blue it was almost warm, but it was that color that you only see in winter.”
“Like your brother’s eyes?”
“Have you been checking out my brother?”
“He’s not bad.”
“I’m going to put that out of my head,” Marabeth said.
“But now that I think of it—”
“You think your brother’s hot too.”
“You really need to stop. Now, that I think of it, the man in the dream does remind me of Kris.”
“The man?”
“Yes, in the dream. Not so much that he looked like Kris, but he sort of… he was very tall and square foreheaded and sort of serious the way Kris—or Dad—could be. But he was blond. They’re dark. The men in my family are all pretty dark, but this man was blond and… there was this woman. She was blond too.”
“That’s a very Aryan dream.”
“With the bluest eyes.”
“Isn’t it strange that Hitler wasn’t blond, didn’t have blue eyes and might have been Jewish?”
“Sometimes I feel like we’re having two entirely different conversations.”
“Isn’t your mom Jewish?”
“Her mother is.”
“Which makes her, which makes you. Just saying.”
“Well, we’re still going to midnight Mass, and bitch are you trying to call me Hitler bccause I had a dream about two blonds?”
“It did seem that way,” Joyce acknowlged. “But I think I was just saying shit. You know? The way I say shit.”
“Yeah, you do say a lot of shit.”
“See.”
“But the thing was, I woke from the dream afraid. And I don’t know why I was so afraid because the dream sounds wonderful. I mean, doesn’t it sound wonderful?”
They were heading up McCord road to the northwest part of Lassador where the city spread thin and turned into suburbs and subdivisions, fields, barns and the occasional strip mall.
“It sounds beautiful,” Joyce said. “But it can’t be all of the dream because, you’re right. Why would you wake up scared? I could see waking up sad because you weren’t there, though personally I’d feel that way if I dreamed about being in Havana or St. Croix or someplace warm, but… Goddamn.”
The road was already getting crowded again as they entered the more developed area of Northdale, and though it was a way off, even Marabeth could see the the ant swarm of cars filling the parking lot of Northdale Mall, already anticipate the horror or shopping.
“This,” Joyce said, “will make your biggest nightmares seem like bliss.”



”How do those guys selling the lotion in the kiosks always know the people they can run up to and rub the lotion on?” Joyce wondered as Marabeth opened the door to her apartment on their return.
“Every hawker sees me coming and knows I’m a safe target.”
“And how do I remember that the name of the guy who played Cousin Larry on Perfect Strangers was Mark Lyhn Baker?” Marabeth asked as they entered the apartment, carrying heavy bags “See, the human mind is a strange thing.”
“What the hell is that?” Joyce wondered.
“what the hell is what?’
“Mara, are you deaf?”
“But now Marabeth heard the humming in the house, and she tensed remembering the dream and then looked around.
“I’m not getting killed today.”
“We should leave,” Joyce whispered.
“This is my house,” Marabeth whispered back, “At least up until the first of the month.”
She looked around and settling on an old candlestick, she pulled out the white candle, laid it on the kitchen table and then advanced to the entrance of the hallway to wait for the bathroom door to open. When it did, she launched herself down the hall with a scream and received a scream in return and then stalked back into the living room while Kris shouted, “Holy shit, Mara!”
Down the hall, into the living room came Kris Strauss, wet from a shower and wrapped in one of Marabeth’s turquoise toels.
“What are you doing here?”
“Preparing to air dry, but that’s not gonna happen now.”
“It could,” Joyce said, assessing him.
“Hello Joyce,” Kris said, neutrally before looking at his sister again.
“I do have a key. I always come here. I just got back from Chicago. I didn’t feel like going back to Mom and Dad’s.”
“Well, you…have a point. But you totally scared the shit out of me.”
“It’s my fault,” Joyce said. “I was the one who told her to watch out. I was the one who got paranoid about robbers and everything.”
“Joyce wanted us to bring all of her stuff to the apartment while she’s here. She thought robbers might break into her car.”
“That’s actually a very safe assessment,” Kris said. “This is the biggest time of year for robberies.”
“Oh,” Marabeth said.
“Yeah,” Joyce said with a touch of triumph.
“So…” Kris pointed in the direction of Marabeth’s bedroom. “My clothes are in there. You mind if I go change and stuff?”
“Ooops. Yeah,” Mara said. “Glad to have you home.”
“Oh, yeah,” Kris said. “And I’ve got… stuff to tell you.”
“Private stuff,” Joyce assessed.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kris said. “Just… I’ve seen some stuff in the last few days.”
“Well,” Marabeth said, “it is Chicago.”
“Kris,” Joyce said, “I will kick myself if I don’t tell you that you have just the right amount of chest hiar. I mean, you look really lovely in a towel.”
Kris stood there looking at her, and he tilted his head, almost doglike.
“I don’t know exactly how I feel about that,” he told her, “but I’m going to say thank you, and go and get dressed.”
As he left Joyce said, “I really do just wish he would wear the towel and leave it at that.”
“Are you through?”
“Or maybe not even the towel.”
Marabeth looked at her.
“I imagine he’s like, just hairy enough all over for it to be nice, but not too hairy. You know?”
“I don’t know,” Marabeth said, “and I don’t want to.”

“The sky goes grey so quickly,” Marabeth noted as they sat on the sofa.
“I feel like I just got out of bed, and to be honest, I did wake up, but, it’s like it’s almost night again.”
“Almost Christmas Eve,” Kris said. “Well, I guess it’s been Christmas Eve all day, but,” he shrugged.
They sat on the sofa like children, a crocheted blanket over him and one over her, their knees gathered to their chest as she sipped on cocoa and he on bouillon.
“I even don’t shudder at the prospect of midnight Mass,” Marabeth said.
:”But, you were always the one more religious than me.”
“Well, it’s not the religion that makes me shudder,” Marabeth said. “It’s the family.”
“Ah, they’re not so bad.”
“You’re right,” Marabeth allowed.
“Well, you did flee the country.”
“But I came back.”
“Property values are rising and everything,” Kris said, “Are you sure?”
“As long as it’s crowded with Kellers and Strausses, then yes, I’m sure.”
Kris yawned and Marabeth said, “You know, you can crash here until we go to church. If you don’t feel like going home.”
“It’s not that I don’t feel like going home,” Kris said, stretching. “I just don’t feel like going home yet.”
“Because of Chicago?”
“Yeah.”
“I like Chicago as much as the next girl,” Marabeth said. “I like it better than New York, but the way you talked about it… You said you saw things. Things that changed you.”
“Yeah,” Kris said, though he didn’t explain it further until she kept looking at him.
“It’s,” Kris began. “It’s…Have you ever read those… No, that’s not it.”
Kris didn’t quite frown. He had a far off look in his eyes.
“I’m trying to say what I saw, but it’s like I can’t. It’s like I want to tell you everything, and then the words die and somehow I can’t. Do you believe people can put spells on you?”
When Marabeth stared at him, Kris said, “You were always the person who believed in more than I was able to.”
“Yes,” Marabeth said, “and that’s why when you ask me if I believe that people can put spells on you, I’m a little bit taken aback”
“Well,” Kris shook his thick, messy hair, “I don’t think anybody put a spell on me. I think it’s likely that I just can’t speak because the whole situation was… was a spell put on me.”
Marabeth was a patient woman. Her little brother had, even in childhood, been the kind of boy whose eyes narrowed and took on a far off quality before trying to describe something deep and lofty, and though the cousins had had little time for it, Marabeth had thought it was adorable. Eventually she realized it was more than adorable and so she sat, waiting for him to get his thoughts together.
Suddenly Kris laughed and clapped his sister on the knee.
“It’s… so much out there. More than we’re usually willing to admit. The stuff we don’t think is real, it’s real. There’s another world, and we’re part of it Mara. And I don’t know how.”
“Yes,” Marabeth said, excitedly. “That’s what art is like.”
“No, I don’t mean a metaphorical world,” Kris said. “I don’t mean like Paris is out there or culture is out there or…”
“Neither do I,” Marabeth said. “All my life, when I paint, I’m trying to get to something, like a dream I woke from but I can’t remember. There is a world, not necessarily a happy one or an easy one, and I belong to that world, and I guess you belong to it too, and I’ve been trying to see it. Sometimes I do, Kris. I had a dream this morning, a dream I still can’t piece together, and it’s part of that world too.”
Kris was nodding the whole tiem his sister spoke, and now he took his hand through his brown hair which immediately stood up again.
“Do you know what I think?” he said.
She waited.
“Whatever that world is, or, that… MORE is, it’s what undid Dad. It’s why he left that day and never came back. It’s why everything was the way it was. It’s why I almost lost it. But I don’t care, you know, because whatever it is, it’s a part of me. I have to find it.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am liking this new part of this continuing story! These new characters are interesting and I am enjoying getting to know them. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you had a great night!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Who are you enjoying the most? Who is most intriguing?

 

[CharmedFan28]

Probably in answer to both Marabeth and her relationship with her brother Kris. They seem to have an interesting relationship and I am enjoying getting to know them.

 

[ChrisGibson]

There will definitely be more Marabeth and Kristian and much more of the Strausses tomorrow night

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE BEASTS

END OF CHAPTER ONE



The large, high ceilinged living room was filled in the house on 1958 Dimler Street. On the stereo, Grandma played her favorite Christmas album of the Westminster Choir singers and over the crowd about the great Christmas tree, the choir sang:

Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella!
Bring a torch, to the stable call
Christ is born. Tell the folk of the village
Jesus is born and Mary's calling.
Ah!* Ah! beautiful is the Mother!
Ah! Ah! beautiful is her child.

“Ah, there she is!” Myron called as Marabeth entered the house. “The prodigal returns. And who is this lovely lady?” he said looing at joyce.
“Nothing for me?”
“Bah!” Myron, a long tall, red nosed and red faced, wide eyed and round headed man in his thirties said, slapping Kris on the back, “We see your ass all the time.”
“This is my friend, Joyce McNamara,” Marabeth said, “and by the way, please stop acting like you never see me.”
“Joyce,” Myron offered his long skinny arm, “may I get you a punch?”
“He’s recently divorced,” Marabeth told Joyce
“What?” Myron blinked, smoothing his hair back dramatically from his prominent forehead.
“If you want to be a Strauss family rebound, that’s up to you,” Marabeth shrugged.
“”Howabout I think about rebounding later, and get a punch for now?”
“Marabeth,” an old woman called, “what took you so long to get here and Kristopher, when will you finally learn to comb your hair?”
“Grandma it is combed.”
“Is that what you call it?” the white haired woman wondered. Running her fingers through his nest crown of hair.
“Mara you look so nice tonight. Even your mother won’t complain. And Joyce, that shade of green!”
“I thought that wth my red hair I might look like a Christmas tree.”
“Nonsense,” Grandma said. “And even if you did, what’s more beautiful and stately than a Christmas tree?”
As Myron returned with her glass,and Joyce nodded, she raised the punch to her lips and someone at her side said, “You want to sip that super slow.”
Joyce turned to the blond man who had just arrived, and Myron stuck out his lower lip in consternation at the look on her face, but she was a grown woman and she only asked, “And why is that?”
“Because it’s the strongest punch in Lassadoir,” the man said, “Maybe even the state of Ohio.”
“You know for sure?” Joyce said.
“I know cause I made it.”
He held out his hand, “Jim. Jim Struass.”
He was one of the only blonds in the room, and Jim was not simply blond, he was a little bit golden, even his skin, and his eyes were a bright deep blue, completely unlike Kris’s ice blue eyes, Joyce thought.
“Jim,” Joyce said ;’Then, Joy, Joy MacNamaa.”
“”Is Jim hitting on Joyce?” Kris murmured.
“James is just being friendly,” Grandma said. “You know James. He always had a big personality.”
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Marabeth said, “but Joy seems to like it. And she’s a grown woman, so...”
“Yeah,” Jim said, “I got a little carried away with the punch. I mean, I like it strong, but oops. You know, a little too much bourbon, and—”
Joyce interrupted him with an exclamation.
“Wow!”
“See!” jim pointed at her and hten the punch.
“This is some good shit,” Joyce said. “Really opens your eyes. I kind of need a cigarette after that.”
Jim Strauss pulled a pack of Camels out of his breastpocket. “That can absolutely be a thing,” he told her. “But you can’t smoke in here.”
“Well, I can’t smoke outside,” Joyce said, “I’ll never need a cigarette that bad.”
“Don’t even worry about that,” said Jim. “We’re not barbarians. We got a smoking room just like fancy people in old days. C’mon.”
Joyce looked back at Marabeth and Kris, and Kris was scowling for some reason, but Marabeth shrugged and whispered, “Go on.”
And so Joyce did.

Joyce leaned forward while Jim reached out to light her cigarette. She took a deep inhale and exhaled while he lit his own. He looked different from any Strauss she had ever seen, Marabeth included. In the house full of brown haired and often brown or blue eyed people sat this golden haired man, eyes a warm blue blinking behind his stylish glasses. He was not as tall as Kris. Or tall as that silly Myron for that matter. He seemed perfectly proportioned, and as he took another inhale of his cigarette and smoke trialed out of his nose.
She looked around and said, “This is one hell of a room.”
“The library,” Jim said, looking around at the shelves of books, at the heavy dark curtains and high ceilings. “Though what it’s always been called is the smoking room, especially since Aunt Becca would always tell us not to smoke in here.”
“Marabeth’s mom is your aunt?”
“Right,” Jim said. “Or, technically, Marabeth’s dad, Uncle Nate is my uncle.”
The extrovertedness turned inward for a moment and Joyce did not press it. Marabeth’s father had been missing for more than a year, and he had had issues before that.
“He was the closest thing I had to a dad,” Jim said. “He wasn’t perfect. But he loved me. They took me in. Uncle Nate. Aunt Becca. After everything that happened to my mom.”
“You’re like a surrogate brother,” Joyce started, then said, “No, you are a surrogate brother.”
Jim shrugged, looking suddenly shy. Then he said, “How long have you been friends with Mara?”
“Since college.”
“I’ve never met you.”
“no,” Joyce said. She was about to add,” I don’t think so, but that sounded disingenuous.
“Yeah, Marabeth doesn’t really talk about me, I don’t guess.”
“In all fairness she’s really fucked up,” Joyce said, and Jim burst out laughing.
“No, I mean, she is. The only people I’ve ever met in her family are Kris—but that’s cause he’s always staying over with her—her parents a few times, and her grandmother—your grandmother too, I guess.’
“Yeah,” Jim said.
“So, how are all of you related?” Joyce asked. “I mean, it’s all of these people who are cousins and I don’t think Myron is your brother.”
“Myron is my cousin. He’s all of our cousins.”
“And there are these pictures on the wall. Like a real stately house.”
“It’s kind of a sad house.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Jim said. “This is the house where it all began.”
“That,” Joyce said, “is the most ominous thing I’ve heard all night.”
Jim sat up and took one last drag on his cigarette, then blew out his smoke saying, “Filthy!
“That,” Jim pointed to a large, dirty oil painting on the wall between the two curtained windows, “is the old man himself, Friederich Strauss. That’s my great grandfather. He’s everyone’s great grandfather.”
Joyce saw a severe looking man of silver grey hair and unbending demeanor in waistcoat nad jacket, and Jim said, “He casts one long fucking shadow. That woman in the oval black and white photo who does not get her own oil painting is Katherine Strauss nee Dashbach. That was Friederich’s wife. Her children were Maris, Claire and James. Yes, that’s right, James. Maris is dead. She’d been gone a long time ago. She is Myron’s grandmother. Myron’s sister is Amy and his other brother is Eric. Aunt Claire had lots of kids too. They live all over here. All that group of the family. But they’re Kellers. Get this: Claire married into the Kellers too, and so all of her kids and grandkids, at least the men, are Kellers. Maris was the oldest and she always had a bone to pick about this fucking house not being theirs, but who wants it?”
Joyce looked around and thought she would want it, if she could get out of it whatever made the shadows in the high ceilings and dimmed the lights.
“And then, of course,” Jim continued there was James. James is my grandfather. He was Grandma’s love, but the way some people talk about it, maybe he was Grandma’s project. He seems like he was a lot of work. That must be where we get it from. Anyway, Grandma had three kids. Nathan, Mara and Kris’s dad, my dad Byron, and Kristin. But she died.”
They both jumped at the new noise, but it was only the heavy door opening, its friction against the carpet.
“Can we join you?” Marabeth asked, followed by Kris.
“Absolutely, Jim was just telling me about your family.”
“Oh,” Kris said, “Sorry.”
“Why?” Joyce asked.
“Our family’s weird,” Kris said, but Marabeth just took a cigarette from Jim and lit it for herself.
“I imagine all families are,” Joyce said. “but you have to remember, I never had a family. And that man keeps staring at me.”
“Oh,” Kris glowered, folding his arms over his chest, “Friederich will do that.”
“Did you know him?.”
“None of us did,” Kris said. “I think he was old when he came to America.”
“He looks like the man in my dreams,” Marabeth said. Then she added, “He isn’t. But he looks clo-se to it, and ohhh!”
She turned to the empty fireplace Joyce and Jim were sitting on either side of. Joyce looked up and said, “I didn’t even notice her. That painting.”
Over the mantel, directly across from Friederich as if sharing the room with him, was a green gowned woman enthroned in a high backed chair, a fox slote about her neck. A cigarette holder was in her fingers like a scepter, or even like the wand of a wicked fairy, and wicked was the smile on her beautiful face, under her marcelled golden hiar which resembled Jim’s just a little.
“Pamela,” Kris said.
“Who?”
“Aunt Pamela,” Kris said. “Never Auntie Pamela, never anything like that. She died when I was young. She was…”
“It was Pamela who was in my dream,” Marabeth realized. “Pamela Strauss.”
“But you didn’t tell me about her,” Joyce said, almost accusingly to Jim.
“Remember I said our great grandfather was not young when he came to America?” Jim asked.
“When Friederich came he did not come alone. He already had a daughter, almost fully grown. Great Aunt Pamela. They say Great grandfather was a monster, but if he was then she was the monstress.”
“The less said about her the better,” Kris said.
But it stopped none of them from looking up at her portrait, and they were all a little relieved when the door opened and Rebecca Strauss entered the room saying, “Put out your cigarettes and air your dirty selves out. It’s time to head on over ot Saint Ursula’s for midnight Mass.

THE BEGINNING OF CHAPTER TWO WILL POST LATER TONIGHT

 

[ChrisGibson]

T W O

CHRISTMAS
PRESENTS





Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

-Friedrich Nietzsche















The high, wide grey facade of Saint Ursula’s Cathedral made up the center of Germantown. It was two blocks down from the Strauss House where Dimler Street met King Street, and its face stood on King Street, the wide triple doorways like encircled by earlike rings of saints and angels, at the top of a long flight of high steps. Light shone through stain glass, and the Strausses and Kellers, arriving early but not early enough, drove around and around and through the parking lot looking for spaces. At one point Myron and Jim honked at eah other fighting over a choice space between the old social hall the brick school building.
“I’m glad we drove alone,” Joyce said to Marabeth.
“How you like the family?”
“I like them just fine,” Joyce said as Marabeth simply parked a block down in front of the school building. “I think I like you all better than you like yourselves.”
Marabeth laughed and said, reflectively, “That might not be far from the truth.
“When you said Kris lived at home, I thought… well you know, I thought of someone living in their mom’s basement, which isn’t much like Kris. But now that I’ve seen that house… How is it I never saw the house?”
“I never took you there,” Marabeth answered simply, getting out of the car. As she shut the door and Joyce shut hers, and she crossed the frosted grass to the sidewalk, she added, “I never feel much of a need to go very often, so there really isn’t a reason you would have been there. But you seem to be a big hit. Especially with Jim and Myron.”
“I think your cousins might be the kind of guys who hit on everyone.”
Across Dimler Street from them were several old houses, most of them strung up with Christmas lights, some tastefully and some not so much. Joyce realized that just because this was Germantown didn’t mean there was anything particularly German about the houses, and now they passed the long school building and were walking in front of something else, tall, mansard roofed, brick with white trim windows and finely made.
“Of that’s the social hall,” Marabeth said. “When I was growing up we went to gym there and sometimes we went to weekly Mass. We had special masses in Saint Ursula proper. I went to Girl Scouts there.”
“You were a Girl Scout?”
“I was a Brownie,” Marabeth modified, “and not a very good one.”
Marabeth exhaled. “I can see my breath. We need to pick up the pace. But… I love this place. I mean, I know I talk about not wanting to be here and all of that, but I do love it here. Especially on Christmas.”
Now that they had approached the actual church, they were coming into contact with other people and exchanging Merry Christmases.
“Marabeth!” one or two called out. Marabeth embraced a black girl with microbraids and explained, “This is Diana Vickers. We went to K through 8. Oh my God, I didn’t know you’d be back in the neighborhood for Christmas.”
“Just for a few days?” Diana said. “Are you sitting with the clan?’
“I am. I didn’t see your parents.”
“They’re in the back with the husband.
“The husband? Do I get to meet him?’
“Did you think you’d get out of meeting him?”
Joyce noted that Diana wasn’t the only black person there and when they entered through the north transept of the church and she could see, past the rows of pews into the great lit nave there were all sorts of people
I’m so stupid. Germantown was Germantown in 1900. They’ve got to have all sorts of people living here now. She decided, as Marabeth genuflected and she did as well, and they turned down the arcade aisle looking for her family, that she would keep this bit of stupidity to herself.
Marabeth did not bother to sit down with Kris, who was beside her mother and grandmother whom he had driven. Apparently it was enough that the family be more or less together, and Joyce was counting past Myron and Jim, Myron’s kids and Peter’s kids and the other younger cousins. There would have just been too much crawling over people, and Marabeth pointed to a pew toward the back and slid in, tapping a dark haired woman not unlike herself who clapped her hands, reached over and hugged her, and then hugged Joyce, though they’d never met.
“My cousin Maris,” Marabeth said, and Joyce thought she’d heard the name earlier.
“It was my great aunt’s name. Her grandmother,” Marabeth whispered. She was rudely shoved and was about to say something inappropriate for church when she looked up and laughed.
“Joyce, Ben Keller. Ben Keller,” Marabeth said, “Joyce.”
But by then, the lights in the massive church were dimming. Joyce had the sensation of being inside the ribcage of a great whale, and now only some of the lanterns shone from the high ceiling as the children’s choir sang:





The first Nowell the angel did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;
In fields where they lay, keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter's night that was so deep:

Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell,
Born is the King of Israel.

Marabeth did not think of herself as away from God. She was no atheist. She thought of herself as the title Spiritual-But-No-Longer-Religious. The world had ended and started at Saint Ursula’s for her once, and when she was away from it she would make fun of this, but sitting here in this darkness, under the high vaulted ceiling in the wide apart forest of these trees, able to see the crèche near the altar, highlit while the music went on, she thought, well, this world is very big, and very mysterious, and no wonder I thought God could be contained in it.
Once I thought I’d found something better. What did I find?
Tonight she felt unready and foolish, and as if she had misjudged everything, and now even more lights went out, and the children’s choir began to sing:

Once in royal David’s city
stood a lowly cattle shed,
where a mother laid her baby
in a manger for His bed:
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ, her little child.

As they sang, the children entered flanking off on either side of the manger, and the next to the last child removed a rose that had lain in the manger, and then the last child, a Keller cousin, placed an infant Jesus, legs crossed arms open, into the manger as the church lanterns gradually brightened. The priest incensed the manger, and white smoke filled the church, sweet and thick at the same time, as the Mass began. Marabeth could not say that she perceived something, for perception means understanding. But something was unlocked in her at that moment, as the congregation’s voice swelled along with the organ. She was in the miracle of Christmas, and she could not rightly say exactly what that miracle was.

“I’ve been away from all this for so long,” Marabeth said after Mass, while the organ fantasy was playing and the church still smelled of incense. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought I was too much of a grown up for it.”
Joyce nodded.,
“We could come here. Now and again,” she looked around the arcades and the grottos where red candles glowed under saint feet. “Not all the time, mind you. But now and again.”
“I know what you mena,” Maris said, “It does get you.”
Marabeth grinned and her grandmother came to them squeezing their hands and kissing them.
“Merry Christmas, Joy.”
“Are you guys ready to head back?” Kris asked.
Marabeth looked at Joyce and Joyce said, “Part of me doesn’t want to leave.”
“But the rest of you?” Kris said.
“It’s time to go,” Joyce decided.
Outside, the night was black and blue and snow covered the ground. As they walked down Dimler Street, others called out, “Merry Christmas,” and the world seemed different and safe and full of promise.
“Do you want me to take you home?” Marabeth asked.
“Were you going?’
“I was going to our house, and I know you’re invited,” Marabeth said. “We always sit around a little longer and drink a coffee or a cooca, open one gift apiece then slowly move toward bed.”
“I’d like to be there for that,” Joyce said, “if it wouldn’t be interfering.”
“Oh, no,” Marabeth said. “I think I’d love it.”
They crossed the street, and as Joy looked down the main thoroughfare of King Street, she saw a McDonalds, a Burger King, rows of shops and apartment buildings and then they crossed, heading down the three blocks to the Strauss House. Now Joyce understood it more. All of the townhouses on this street were tall and the Strauss house was three stories, the first two with high windows, the last with low windows under the intricate cornices. Strauss House brick with black shutters over the great windows and as Marabeth parked they crossed the sidewalk and went through the low iron gate up the steps to the broad stoop.
“What?” Marabeth said.
“It’s a little bit like a mansion,” Joyce said as they entered.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Marabeth comes from an interesting family! I am enjoying learning more about her and the others. I'm wondering how these characters relate to the other ones but I guess I will have to wait and see to find that out! Great writing and I look forward to more soon! Thanks for posting 2 portions tonight, you didn't have to do that!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Also forgot to say sorry for posting late, I got on as soon as I could and will be earlier tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER TWO
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

CONTINUED



“It’s so late,” Kris almost moaned from the high backed chair. “Are you guys going home or staying here?”
“I’m staying,” Jim piped up.
“You always stay,” Kris said, “even though you’ve got a penthouse.”
“It is not a penthouse.”
“It’s not a roach motel either.”
“Stay here, Joyce!” Mrs. Strauss interrupted the boys, “It will be just like old times. We can get up in the morning and have Danish and coffee and open presents before everyone else comes.”
“Yes, let’s,” Grandma said, and then Marabeth looked to Joy and Joy said, “If there is a bed involved and maybe a housecoat.”
“Oh, I’ll do you better than that,” Rebecca Strauss clapped her on the arm. “You look about my size and I’ve got pajamas.”
As they departed, Grandmother kissed even Joyce good night, and then she headed out of the living room, past the dining room and down the hallway. Her room was beside the library, and across from the bathroom, and next to her was Rebecca’s room and then the kitchen that led to the back porch. But for now Rebecca led them up the stairs, Joyce deliciously in the middle, feeling a fortunate part of the company, Mrs. Strauss at the top of the steep stair leading to the second floor, Jim and Kris straggling with Kris murmuring, “It is a penthouse.”
` Up here it was still lit, and it seemed a little like a hotel or a European inn. Rebecca showed Joyce a large white tiled bathroom with porcelain knobs and a lit mirror, and on either side of it were two rooms.
“That was Mara’s room growing up,” she pointed to the one to their rights that must have looked over the street, “and this one here might as well be yours tonight. It’s the spare room, but it’s not that spare ‘cause family always stays over.”
“And,” Jim said, “because there are lots of spare rooms.
“Good night guys,” he waved them off and gave Marabeth a quick hug. He looked at Joy mischievously for a while then said, “Don’t think you’re getting away without a hug too,” and hugged her quickly before heading down the hall.
“And that,” Kris said, “is my cue to be off as well.”
He kissed them all, and and as he went to the stairwell, suddenly Joyce realized what she hadn’t seen before, Across from the stair case was a door to another room, but now she realized the doorway was not what she had thought, but the beiginning of another staircase. She aside, watching Kris Strauss move to the darkness.
You’re going up there?’
“It’s an entire floor.” He turned around and laughed.
Joyce thought it was completely eerie, but Kris said, “I know it like the back of my hand. I grew up in this house, Joy. Goodnight.” .
He disappeared into the dark, and she could hear his feet touching the floor upstairs as she turned around and headed to bed.

The vastness of the house on Dimler Street was surprising to her, something Marabeth had always taken for granted, and never really seen until she had seen it through Joyce’s eyes, and how odd that on this one floor it was only she and Joyce in the room on the other side of the great shared bathroom. Yes, Jim was down the hall, but upstairs among four bedrooms, Kris was the only one asleep, if he was asleep.
Back in her old bedroom, which was the size of her living room downtown, with ceilings almost twice as high, and the curtains open over Dimler Street, Marabeth’s head was filled with exciting thoughts, and she tossed and turned in the large bed thinking she would never get to sleep until, at last, stretching out and yawning, that was exactly what she did.
She woke in the middle of the night, and it was such a sharp waking, and it was so definitely dark, that Marabeth realized she had been in a deep slumber. Even as she lay there, fiddling with the thought of going to the bathroom, she remembered what had woken her. Slowly, the dream returned to her. Her father, James Strauss, tall like Kris, but more handsome than his son, chiseled jaw, wavy hair and wolf eyes like some 1950’s movie star. He was in that dirty old coat he loved so much, trudging through grey February looking snow toward the river, and he carried a great bundle with him. He sat down on a rock breathing.
He looked so lost, and even in the dark, as he stared out at her, or at nothingness, she thought, “He is young. He’s not very old at all.
“Father, I see you. Father I see you. I hear you. Come back. Please. We’re waiting for you. Mother’s done nothing but wait for you.”
But he did not hear her or see her. Now Nathan Strauss stood up and shook his head, and hefting the bundle over his shoulders, he began to move away, out of her focus.
Marabeth remembered it now, and sat in the darkness heartsore. She was not a crying kind of person, and could not see her way to doing it now. But she ws full of an incredible sadness for someone she was sure by now she would never see again, at least, not in this life.


Kris Strauss’s life could be marked by a steady progression upstairs. Grandmother had always lived here, lived here before his parents, and as a little boy he stayed downstairs in the room beside her. When they were all children, he and Marabeth shared a room for a long time, and even though the house was full of rooms, it was full of relatives. For a long time Delia stayed upstairs, and Maris, then her sisters too. Peter had a room up there as well.
But when Marabeth turned seven, Dad had said, “It’s time for big girls to have their own room, and Marabeth had chosen the room that was always hers. For some reason Kris couldn’t quite remember, her parantes were not completely pleased with the choice.
“Honey, it’s kind of big for a little girl. Are you sure you want it?”
Without complaining, Marabeth simply reminded them, “You said I could have any room I wanted.”
“Besides,” Mom agreed, “we’re right down the hall. And she won’t be a little girl forever.”
And so Marabeth had moved up, leaving Kris the room to himself, but he was always coming up with his parents or falling asleep in a corner of Marabeth’s large room.
“I think he wants to be upstairs with us,” Dad had said one night at dinner. “We could all live on the second floor. It’s colder downstairs anyway.”
“You should,” Delia had said. “I hate climbing up those steps. I’d be glad to switch rooms with Kris. Me and Jim could be down there.”
Kris couldn’t remember if Jim had pointed out that there was no reason he should share a room with his mother, but Delia had gone downstairs and Kris had taken her room,
But as the years had gone by, Kris noticed that everyone ignored the plain doorway that ended after the stair case where the stairs continued up to the third floor, and because it wasn’t an attic, exactly, and not locked away, Kris became very curious about it. On one hand, there just weren’t enough people in the house to fill the whole thing, but on the other hand, the third floor seemed completely forgotten. Even Marabeth, it seemed, had no real desire to go upstairs, and so he had gone up himself. He was surprised when he learned that, upstairs, in the hallway, the lamps still had working light bulbs. It was a long empty hall, one filled with a sort of peaceful solitude not at all like an abandoned attic.
He’d expected it to be covered in dust but the warm lamp in the center hallway which he emerged into revealed polished honey colored hardwood floors and white walls with a print of two on them, a hallway with windows near the top of the ceiling at both ends. There were three doors on either side. Later, when Kris descended, and it did feel like a true descent, to the first floor, his grandmother would tell him how long ago the top floor had been servant quarters. Two long dormitories, one for the men and the other for the women, and then in time, part of one had been cut off to make a kitchenette for them, and after plumbing, another had been cut up to make a bathroom.. This part of the house, clean and forgotten, where no one ever came, became Kris’s sacred place, and little by little, he had moved things from his old room to one of the rooms upstairs, a room which few people in his family had ever seen. Through all the years, when cousins with their little intrusive feet came running all through the house, when guests he did not wish to see made themselves present, no one came this high up. Something about it told people to keep away.
Upstairs was good place to be a teenager. Tonight he felt it, all those strange feelings that had come with adolescence. At first he had thought they were sexual, for they came when sex came, and his father had sat him down and told him, “If you start to feel strange, it’s okay, you know. If you start to feel odd in your skin. You have to tell me. If you… If you, I don’t know. If you begin to feel weird. When your body changes...”
Kris hadn’t wanted to talk about that. He’d become moody.
“I know about sex, Dad.”
Nathan, Kris now remembered, had looked like he was about to say something but, instead, his father had said, “Well, alright.”
They had all watched him for some time. Or so it seemed. It seemed as if Nathan never wanted his son out of his sight, and then, one night, when he was fourteen, after a day of feeling particularly angry, he went into an uncontrollable tantrum that had spiraled into a rage before he descended into the black madness he hated to talk about, and when he came out of it his father had said:
“I wondered if it would happen to you. It’s depression, you know? Well, worse than depression. It’s a… an upsetting of the nerves, you know. You can black out from rage and anger. I hoped it wouldn’t happen to you. You can’t detect schizophrenia until the teenage years, and I was hoping it would pass you over.”
“I’m… crazy?”
“No,” Nathan frowned while Rebecca stood up, shaking her head.
“No, you have a sickness. A lot of us do. And there are medicines. You can control it.”
“But I didn’t want to give it to you until was time,” Nathan had said. “And now… I think it’s time.”
“Will it… screw me up?”
His mother laughed, touching her red hair.
“No, it will keep you from being screwed up.”
Her laughter seemed hollow, but then, how happy could she be about seeing her son flip out and lose his mind?
“We will go to the doctor tomorrow,” Nathan said. “Get a referral. Get things sorted out.”
Kris did not look reassured. Marabeth had not been there, almost as if she knew he wouldn’t want her to see him like this.
Nathan, looking weak and weary and worried, hugged his son quickly.
“Relax,” he gave a brittle laugh, “It’ just means you’re like your old man.”


MORE OF ROSSFORD AND THE BEASTS IN A COUPLE OF NIGHTS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Well written and very interesting with what is going on in the story at the moment. As someone who has some mental health of issues I really appreciated the way you handled it in the story. I hope you have a great weekend and I look forward to more of both stories in a few nights!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Even though, I do know that there are some people who suffer from certain mental and emotional sicknesses and some people who are "normal", I tend to sit near the prone to depression side myself and several people in my life do as well. This is very important to me because I have a hard time identifying with people who don't feel depression or anxiety or who claim to be "healthy" and I think in some way, most people are suffering because the world, as it is, is sort of sick and harmful to our minds. So for me, Kristian and he Strausses are a sort of joy to write about, like Jay and Michael in the earlier stories. I'm glad you enjoyed, I would have felt quite wrong in my storytelling if you didn't.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The next day they went downtown or to the part of Germantown which touched old downtown and visited Dr. Keibler. Kris had seen him on occasion, and remembered that the old doctor was some type of cousin. They did not bring Mom or Marabeth, and when they got there, Dr. Keibler told his father. “We’re going to talk, just me and Kris. Do you mind?”
And Kris couldn’t tell if he was being condescended to or not, but he said, “Yes.”
Even now Kris couldn’t remember what they had talked about, except that he talked about the agitations and the nerves that happened some time, and how he had felt before blacking out.
“Have you ever seen birth control?” Dr Keibler asked.
Kris frowned.
“I’m fourteen!”
“That’s a no. Look,” Dr. Keibler said, handing him a radiating disk, “you have to take this every day. And you have to take the pills in order. That’s why I am asking. That’s how birth control works, and that’s how this medication works. It is a constant thing. Don’t skip your days. Don’t neglect your medication.”



Grey light was coming through the thin curtains when his door burst open and there was laughing and girls on his bed, and Jim burst in singing:

“Willie, bring your little drum;
Robin, bring your fife and come;
And be merry while you play,
Tu-re-lu-re-lu,
Pat-a-pan-a-pan,
Come be merry while you play,
Let us make our Christmas gay!”

“What in the…?” Kris shook the cobwebs from his head.
“We know this is your secret place,” Marabeth leapt upon him, tickling him out of his foul mood. “But I didn’t think we could trust you to wake up on your own.”
“I know we couldn’t,” Jim sat down on the bed. Kris knew that Jim’s life hadn’t been easy, not exactly. But he was well muscled, and his torso and breast clearly defined under his wife beater. Even in the morning his blue eyes shone, and his golden waves were in perfectly tousled curls.
“I’ve put on the coffee and made the fire, and Grandma and Aunt Becca are just getting up.”
Jim slapped Kris’s thigh with that overabundance of friendliness and familiarity that Kris could never respond to. “Come on, sleepy head. Time to go down and greet Christmas day.”
“Could I put on clothes?”
“I like you better without them,” Joy said.
“Let the man get dressed,” Jim stood up. But just your jimmies.”
Jim was in his white and black checked pajama pants. “See you in five sir, and not ten.”
While his sister, Joy, and his cousin disappeared down the hall, then Kris heard them going down the steps, he got up and, hair a mess, slapped his cheeks and then went to his coat and pulled out the disk of pills. They were little, and he didn’t really need water, but he walked down the hall to the bathroom, cupped some in his hand and took some anyway.


“We’ve got Danish and sausage and coffee and, oh my God, are you drinking a beer?”
“It’s Christmas, Mom,” Kris said, coming from the refrigerator and handing one to Jim.
“You just can’t take them anywhere,” Grandma commented. “They’re not fit to enter civilized kitchens.”
“And I did eggs,” Rebecca continued.
“You really went overboard for Christmas morning.” Joyce said.
“It’s just sausage and eggs. The Danish made itself.”
“Talented Danish,” Kris commented as he broke off a piece.
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“You know,” Jim stretched, “I feel sorry for all those poor souls who get up and go to church on Christmas morning.”
“The bishop does Christmas morning Mass,” Grandma said.
“That’s not quite enough of an incentive to make me get up early and sit in a church full of people.”
“I’m surrounded by heathens,” Marabeth’s grandmother lamented, lavishly putting her hand to her brow.
“When is everyone coming over?” Marabeth asked, and Joyce noticed she had already eaten a piece of Danish, and here she ws taking another one ,and so Joyce helped herself too, dipping the edge of the pastry in some of her egg.
“Peter’ll probably be here first. He’ll probably get here before noon.”
“Myron?” Joyce asked.
“You smitten by Myron? Kris asked.
“Shut your mouth,” Joyce said.
“She’s probably trying to figure out how to get away from him,” Marabeth differed. ‘But I think he’s with his ex wife and the kids most of the day.”
“That’s very grown up,” Joyce commented, thinking of the man she had met last night and how she didn’t expect grown up behavior from him.
“And what about Joyce?” Jim said. “Are you staying with us or what?’
“I can’t wear these pjs all day,” Joyce said, “and I’m not going to wear the same thing I wore last night.”
“I guess none of us can,” Jim said, “I know I’m going to go home and get dressed.
“Oh, that’s right,” Joyce remembered, “you all are a family who gets dressed for things.”
Rebecca laughed, and Kris clapped his hands and chuckled at that, but Grandma said, “I’ve been part of this family so long, and I’m so old, I don’t know how other families do things at all.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know either,” Joyce said. “I’ve never had much in the way of family tradition. I will give my mom a call, though.”
Marabeth took a big chug of coffee, almost slammed her mug down, then declared, “I’ve gotta go back to my place for a bit. Howabout I take you back and then we’ll come back when we’re ready?”
“I don’t want wear out my welcome.”
“Look,” Rebecca said, “if you’re sick of us, that’s one thing, but if you’re trying to be kind, we’d love to have you. We get tired of just seeing each other, and as for wearing out your welcome, everyone in this family wore their welcome out years ago.”
“Alright then,” Joyce decided, “what time is dinner?”
“Dinner is whatever time you get here,” Rebecca said. “We just put out the food and everyone helps themselves.”
Joyce shook her head in mock disappointment.
“I really did picture this as a grace around the table family.”
“You saw how many cousins we have,” Kris said. “There really isn’t a big enough table.”


Today, her apartment seemed small, squalid and lonely, and it never felt that way to Joyce MacNamara. She was used to being alone, and she was pretty okay with it. She was alright with the holidays she spent away from a home she didn’t enjoy that much. Family had always been a hassle, the holidays a constant disappointment. But she had learned to deal with this. It was the reality of life, and she had left her place a mess the night before, not expecting to be hurtled into Stauss House and the beauty of Midnight Mass, the joy of cocoa and coffee at one a.m., something like a slumber party for grown ups.
“This house looks like the day after Christmas,” Joyce assessed, surveying the mess.
She realized, even the house she was returning to, which everyone had insisted held darkness, was possibly grim on Decembver 26th. But Christmas Day had that lying quality, and so many people gave in to the lie, that things were about to be better, that the world was on its way to something new and beautiful, and then the next day you saw the grey in the sky, and yellow stains in the snow, and the house was strewn with paper.
Well, never mind all that, it never would do to give into these little voices. Today, somewhere that wasn’t this apartment, there was light and laughter and good Christmas music and a tall tree, and she was on her way back there. She had showered this morning, so even that didn’t need to be done, but first she would be the loyal daughter and call home.
“It’s nice to come home every once in a while,” her mother said. “It grounds you. There’re so many college students around here and you can tell that they don’t have any roots, they don’t’ have a real home. Everybody’s running away, that’s the problem with folks these days.”
“There’s truth in that,” Joyce said.
“You know,” her mother said, “The problem with you is you never had kids. You never got a man. Women need that. You were too proud. You always want someone to be perfect, but life isn’t perfect, and men aren’t perfect.”
“Um hum.”
“Women who don’t have kids end up being kind of selfish. It’s a woman’s place to be a mother, eventually. You never did learn that.”
Joyce took out a cigarette.
“Sometimes, honey, I wonder if you’ll ever be happy.”
Joyce didn’t feel like protesting that she was happy. It was sort of a useless protest anyway. After all, looking around at this apartment with a broken blind, a fucked up curtain and three pairs of panties on the floor, her life didn’took very happy.
“All, I’m saying,” her mom said, “Is you’re not better than the rest of us.”
“I have to go,” Joyce said.
She had envisioned her mother calling and then she would say, “Mom, we need to talk less. We need to talk less and less,” and she would be relieved from this feeling of… she wasn’t exactly sure what to call it, that came with a call home. But Mom never called. Mom just expected to be called, and when she was called, it was some variation of the semi conversation that had just happened.

She didn’t say she was going to Marabeth’s because Joyce already knew the conversation.
“Your lesbian friend?”
“Marabeth is not a lesbian.”
“She seemed like a lesbian.”
“But she isn’t.”
“There’s nothing wrong if she is.”
“Okay, Ma.”
“You know, I had this girlfriend before you were born. I mean a girl, who was a friend. A regular girlfriend. And one night we went out to a club, and we were all dancing, and then I felt these hands on my titties.”
“Alright, Mom.”
“And I liked it. And then I looked down, and I saw these red fingernails. And that’s when I knew.”
“What?”
“What?”
“What did you know?”
“That she was a lesbian.”
“Okay.”
“You get it? Cause she was the one with her hands on my titties.”
“Yes, Mother. I do get it.”
“You don’t have to sound that way about it.”
“I’m not sounding any way.”
“Are you a lesbian?”
“No.”
“It would explain a lot.”
“Maybe.” What could you say you that? “But I’m not a lesbian.”
“Does she live in a big house? Marabeth? Is her family rich? Do you feel like you’re finally high on the hog hanging out with them, Miss Joyce Noyce?”
And here she was, sitting in her apartment having an angry imaginary conversation with her mother that was just as enraging as the real one had been when Marabeth called and said, “Are you ready?”
“You have no idea.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was another excellent portion! I am glad Kris got some help with his issues. It can be a tough thing to get used to but I am sure he will probably be ok. Hopefully not everyone just assumes Marabeth is a lesbian. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

In some ways, you could say that this whole story is about Kris finding healing as much as Marabeth finding out who she is. This whole story is going to be about getting over sickness and affliction, and that's really all I can say.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION OF
CHAPTER TWO


“I forgot how dark it gets, and how early it gets dark,” Joyce reflected as she was crossing the the Cherry Street Bridge, coming back into downtown.
The wide river was nearly black, and in the early evening the white snow on the river walks was grey and the tall buildings of downtown black and grey and grim under the brownish white light. Birmingham Street and Marabeth’s apartment was a little to the left, to the west, and then, once she was in the car with Joyce, they were heading south, back into the German town.
“How was your mother?” Marabeth said. “You’ve got that look on your face.”
“You see that?
As they drove down Demming, Joyce saw a dead cat. It had bad apparently been run over, pressed magnificently by a bus possibly, and frozen to the ground.
“Oh, shit,” Marabeth said, sparing a glance.
“I feel like that cat,” Joyce pronounced, “everytime I call home.”


The sky was dark with early evening when Marabeth and Joyce returned to the house on Dimler Street. Some people were settling down to an after Christmas snack, and some to pie. There was a distinct absence of kids who must have made their way into one of the spare rooms of the house, and Jim was regaling his aunt with a story while Kris looked on with furrowed brows.
“You know they’re the same age,” Marabeth said. “Kris and Jim were always in the same class.”
Joyce nodded.
“Jim is always… a lot. You know. Super talkative. Super happy. Super… well, you’ve met him. And I think Kris feels like Jim is happier than him, has things easier. Which is crazy. Jim just seems to wear happiness better. And he keeps a great deal inside. I mean,” she shrugged, while Jim laughed out loud, reached across and squeezed his grandmother’s hand, “He’s an orphan. His dad died and I can’t even remember Uncle Byron. And… Delia killed herself.”
There was a knock at the door, and Marabeth said, “You heard that, right?”
Yeah,” Joyce nodded.
<Marabeth got up, and Joyce went with her while Jim called out, “Why is anyone knocking today? You just come in.”
But when Marabeth answered the door, the man, though casually dressed in a anarak with the hood down, red headed and common looking, did not look like he had come to party, and he was carrying a satchel with him which Marabeth remembered but couldn’t place how.
“Is this the home of Nathan Strauss, 1948 Dimler Street?”
“Well, yes,” Marabeth said, as the man flashed his badge and she opened the door for him to enter.
The noise in the living room was discernibly quieter, amd now Jim and Kris came into the foyer too.
“I ah…” the man said, “My name is Detective McCord. Peter McCord. Would you be…?”
“His daughter,” Marabeth said, “and this is his son, and this is his nephew, our cousin, Jim. What do you have to tell us?”
Joyce was standing near her now, and Joyce felt like they all knew what this man had to say, were just waiting for him to break the year long spell.
In the background, on the phonograph, Mahalia Jackson wailed:

“What can I give him poor as I am
This little holy child….”

“Ma’am, is your mother here? His wife?”
“Yes, yes,” Marabeth said, “and his mother too, my grandmother. Please, what do you have to say?”
“You would be Marabeth, then,” Detective McCord said, handing her the satchel whose leather strap was cracked. “The message said it was for you, the message attached. I figured you had waited long enough. I brought it.’
“Please, Detective!”
“We found his body last night. Early this morning. We… We did tests. But it’s him. We’ve found your father.”
Joyce felt rocketed out of herself. Sick and dizzy as if she were breaking into fever. She didn’t dare look at her best friend.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.
The music, which had become slower and slower as if the phonograph wound out longer and longer, now stopped as they all stood in the foyer, and Joyce was gripping Marabeth’s hand, feeling her friend’s nails cut into her palm, and Jim had gone back and now he was bringing Rebecca Strauss and his grandmother.
“I am Natalie Keller Strauss,” their grandmother said. “They call me Miss Keller. My son,” she said to the Detective, “you found my son.”
:”Yes,” Detective McCrod said. Then, “Yes. Ma’am.”
“When can we bring him home?”
“In a few days, Ma’am.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to see him.”
“No, Ma’am. No. It seems what happened, happened… some time ago.”
Natalie Keller nodded, reflectively.
“Do you have time to tell us about it.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I could do that.”
“Then please come in,” Natalie said. “Becca?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Would you make him some coffee, and maybe we can go into the study and let him talk, let the others have their Christmas.”
“Yes,” Rebecca nodded, her face white, her eyes wide.
“I’ll help,” Jim said, quickly, catching his aunt’s hand.
Natalie reached back and took Rebecca’s other hand.
“We knew,” Natalie told her, tenderly. “We knew. It was just a matter of hearing, and now we’ve heard.”
Rebecca nodded, and went back past the door way into the living room, and Natalie said, “Detective, come in from this foyer. All of you, let’s come in.”
Kris went into the living room, and Joyce brought Marabeth in with her while Natalie Keller spoke quietly to Detective McCord.
“Thank you,” she told him, and then kissed him on the cheek.
“Ma’am. Miss Keller, I don’t understand.”
“Because, however you brought him, you’ve finally brought my son home.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a good portion. Sad but good. Losing someone is hard for anyone. I hope they can all handle it ok. Great writing and I look forward to the next portion. I hope you are having a nice night.