CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
The map was interesting! Thanks for including that. It helps to place exactly where the story is happening a bit better.
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The Hidden Lives of Virgins
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WE LOOK INTO THE PAST, ROY LOOKS AT HIS FACE AND WONDERS, IAN DECIDES TO COMB HIS HAIR AND DISCOVERS HE LOOKS LIKE A BOOK OF THE BIBLE
“Are you gonna kiss her?” Ian teased his cousin. The two of them along with Mackenzie and Ryan were sitting on the floor of Mackenzie’s long unused bedroom while Mackenzie lay on his back on the bed, looking upside down at them.
“At a funeral?” Roy said, contemptuously, to his cousin.
“Well, you’re not going to be at the funeral the whole time,” Mackenzie pointed out.
“Roy’s gonna get kissed,” Ryan reflected.
“How do you know Roy hasn’t already been kissed?” Ian asked Mackenzie’s younger brother.
Ryan looked quizzically at Roy.
“Stop it already,” Roy said, going red.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Mackenzie, upside down, simpered.
Roy took a pillow and plopped Mackenzie in the face.
“Attacked,” Mackenzie lamented, “in my own room!”
“I love your own room,” Ian said, “but I’m ready to go. You think Vaughan’s ready, now?”
“Probably,” Mackenzie rolled off the bed.
“What’s he doing?” demanded Roy.
It was Ryan who said, “Talking to his mom.”
“What?” Roy looked at his friend.
Ian and Mackenzie looked at each other, trying to figure a way to explain this one anomaly about a friend who was—if not normal—at least one of the more stable things in their life.
“I thought his mom was dead,” Roy said. “In fact I know his mom is dead.”
“It doesn’t seem to stop matters,” Ryan said while the two older boys said nothing.
“He’s always talked to her. About three times a week. And sometimes when he’s asleep she comes to watch.”
Roy looked at Ian and Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded.
“That’s cracked,” Roy said.
“Vaughan’s not crazy,” Mackenzie said. “And if he says he talks to her... Well, he used to say it. He just doesn’t bring it up. But I know he still does it. So I believe him.”
Roy looked at Ian.
“Vaughan’s not nuts,” Ian said. “If he says he’s got a unicorn under his bed, then he does.”
Roy sighed, and Ryan went on.
“She’s real pretty. Most of the time she’s got a white dress. She looks like Madeleine. Only her hair is longer. And she has green eyes.”
“What?” Mackenzie turned to his little brother.
“Vaughan told you all this?” Ian said. It was new to him that Vaughan and Ryan even talked that often.
“Why would he have to?” Ryan wondered, innocently. “You can see her for yourself. Whenever Vaughan’s here. She always shakes her head at Mom and Dad like she wants to scold them.”
Ian and Mackenzie’s eyes looked like they were about to fall out. Roy just stared blankly at his friend.
Suddenly Ryan realized something, and began clapping his hands, laughing like a madman.
“Ry, stop that,” Mackenzie said, a little bothered by his youngest brother spazzing out and confessing to apparitions.
“This is too sweet!” Ryan exulted. “You all can’t see her!”
It was nearly midnight when Vaughan led his friends into the kitchen. He was surprised but only a little by his father, Uncle Ralph and Ida sitting up drinking coffee and smoking the last of their cigarettes. Cedric spooned the remnants of melted ice cream and pie from an apple green bowl.
“I came to check in,” Vaughan told his father.
“Check in as in go to bed?”
“No,” Ian spoke before Vaughan could open his mouth. “Check in as in let you know we’re all alright before we go to Windham Street.” He turned to Ida. Cigarette smoldering, the older woman nodded to Ian.
“Kirk Berghen’s throwing the biggest party over there!” Roy said.
“Kirk Berghen’s always throwing the biggest party over there,” said Cedric. “I thought that’s where you all came from.”
“No we were at a bar,” Vaughan said. “The restaurant part.”
Cedric cocked his head.
“Madeleine vouched for us,” Vaughan explained.
Cedric took a drag from his cigarette.
“And now,” said Vaughan, “we wanna go back out.”
Ida looked at her youngest grandchild, and said to Ryan, “You... are going out?”
Ryan nodded.
“You went to a bar?” she said to the fourteen year old.
Ryan began to redden and stammer.
“Grandma, it was the restaurant part.”
“What’s the world coming to?” Ralph murmured in a tone that could not take itself seriously.
“I don’t know what the world’s coming to, but it’s about time Ryan snuck into his first bar. And you led him?” she said to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
Ida shook her own and murmured, “Aileen always thought you’d be the soft one.”
A little before two in the morning, Vaughan knew they would not be going back to Logan Street or Michael Street tonight. He walked out of the garage, across the weed grown garden into the kitchen of Windham Street, and went up the stairs to the spare room where Ryan and Roy had already given in to the Sandman. Ian and Mackenzie were not long for this world either, Vaughan was sure, as he climbed onto the bed that was usually Ryan’s, and pulled a thin coverlet over himself. Ryan slept on the floor beside Roy.
“Vaughan?” he heard his name in the dark. He was not sure if it was Ryan or Roy.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Do you think Roy could kill someone?”
So it was Ryan.
“Where’d you come up with an oddball question like that?”
“He was telling me... that he had to do something. Say something really important tomorrow. And I thought.... he’s gonna kill somebody.”
“Roy won’t kill anybody,” Vaughan said. “Now go back to sleep. We’ve all got a funeral tomorrow.”
Just then the door flew open, and light filled the room.
“Ahhhhshitttt!” Roy muttered from the floor.
“Come on down right now!” Tina was shouting. “Stearne’s doing a keg stand!”
The morning light cut through George Stearne’s eyelids like a knife. He looked around, and the price he paid was a stabbing pain in his head. But the price was worth it. Yes. He had made it home last night. What would have been unbearable would be to learn that he had passed out in view of many of his students on Windham Street.
Next George Stearne caused himself a great deal of pain by turning to look at the clock on his bed. It was 8:30 in the morning. This meant he could sleep a little longer before the funeral. Part of him debated missing it, but if he did his sister would never let him hear the end of it. Never mind he hadn’t really known the priest.
Half an hour later, George stumbled to the kitchen. From the cut out window looking out onto the half dining room, George saw that he had left Mick passed out on the living room floor, and sunlight was shining on the back of the other man’s head.
George decided it would be best to make enough coffee for the both of them.
As he began spooning coffee into a basket he had- thankfully- cleaned yesterday, the phone rang so shrilly he swore, and from the floor Mick Rafferty swore too.
“Hello?” George groaned. Mick went right back to sleep.
“Yes... unh huh... Yes... Yes... Thank you.”
“Shit,” said George Stearne. He filled the pot with what he hoped was the right amount of water, and prepared to go back to bed.
He didn’t need this. He did not need this. He bypassed the bedroom for the bathroom.
He didn’t need to know right now, after a night of celebration, after being a savior and a drinking god, that he had been wrong, and Luke Madeary could in fact NOT go to Europe.
This was not the first time Luke Madeary had woken up in Kirk Berghen’s garage. Money Caroll was asleep on one side of him, drool hanging from her mouth, her white- woman dreadlocks fuzzy as hell. Tina was asleep, looking peaceful, on the other.
She meant to dye her hair for that funeral she’s got to go to today, Luke thought, looking at the girl’s black hair. She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up and remembers.
He hoped that he had left food out for Old Coconut. Maybe the dog could fend for herself, but she shouldn’t have to. Should she?
Luke grinned in a giddy way.
“I wonder,” he murmured.
“Wonder what?” said Tina, emerging into consciousness. She caught a strand of her still black hair and said, “Fuck! I need to get some Clairol. And pronto.”
Luke grinned at Tina stupidly, and said, “Wonder who’ll watch Coconut when we’re in Europe this fall!”
Ian did not knock on the bathroom door because Roy had left it open. In the manner of someone who is more asleep than awake, Ian briefly noticed his cousin patting his own face and staring at his reflection in the mirror. Ian closed the door, opened his boxers, and pissed loudly while Roy, heedless of it, kept examining himself. While the toilet flushed, Ian came toward the face bowl, shooting the water on, and began washing his hands.
“What are you looking at?” said Ian. But of course when he looked in the mirror he only saw his haggard reflection. The two of them looked alike, but not completely.
“I’m just checking out things,” Roy said.
Ian grinned at his cousin as he shut off the water, shook out his hands, and grabbed a bath towel.
“Rachel will think you’re beautiful,” Ian said, grinning.
Roy grinned back at his cousin, but said, “That’s not what I meant.”
Ida showed up at the house a little before noon, wrapping and unwrapping her red beaded rosary around her fingers. She and Cedric drove to the church, and she said, “Who’s gonna take the kids?”
Cedric, who was not driving, shrugged and played with his tie. “I don’t know. I just thought somebody would work it out.”
At Our Lady of Jamnia, Brothers Mario, Julian and Paul were sitting in the living room. The house smelled like old coffee, and Cedric said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any of you out of habit,” because they were all in black pants and jackets with Roman collars, like priests.
“It’s a shame,” Ida murmured, taking out her cigarettes as she sat down in the battered old chair under the large picture window that looked down on Lyman Street. “I think a bunch of monks in hoods and habits processing into church would have put the fear of God into Our Lady of Jamnia.”
Paul, who looked goofier than ever, smiled and, shrugging, said, “Father Abbot thinks it’s not appropriate for us to wear it outside the house.”
“Now if I was abbot- ” started Mario.
“Good God, we’ve been hearing this for the last fifteen years,” Julian waved it away, and crinkled his red face.
“You know the only reason I didn’t get elected abbot- ” Mario started.
“Is because your name is too close to the last abbot’s,” Julian said, shutting him up.
Ida, cocking her head, and taking a drag from her cigarette, noted, “I see you’ve heard this story before.”
“Did you vote for me?” Mario asked Julian. “After Marion died?”
“No,” Julian said.
“Well to hell with you,” the other monk told him, “I didn’t vote for you either.”
Ralph Hanley came trundling down the stairs and said, “Should we rehearse again?”
“Damnit, Ralph, it’s a funeral, not a fashion show,” Mario said, stamping his cane. “We’re all dressed, Brumbaugh’s still dead. Everything’s the way it should be.”
“It’s lack of planning,” the green eyed priest said, “that can ruin so many ceremonies.”
“Whatever happens,” Mario noted, “he probably won’t care too much.”
“Do we have a Gloria?” Julian asked.
“We always have a Gloria at a funeral,” Ralph said.
“We didn’t have one for Abbot Marion when he died.”
“Yes, we did,” Ralph said.
“No, we didn’t.”
“We did,” Ralph Hanley said flatly.
“Give a man a Roman collar,” Mario told no one in particular, “and he thinks he knows everything.”
Ralph Hanley never knew he was unhappy until he woke up with a bruise on his head from Cedric’s shoe. Cedric, who for years had been his best friend, and then his worst uneasiness, and finally his friend all over again, had made a point. Most people were unhappy and, never having tasted happiness didn’t know how unhappy they were. People were good at forgetting, changing or forsaking their histories as they moved through their present. So even when they tasted happiness by accident, often they forgot the taste, and moved on without it. But sometimes someone was unfortunate enough to be truly, memorably happy, and then that was just no good because, from then on, you knew happiness was out there, and you would do anything to get it back.
Cedric had said this many years into his marriage. But many years still before Vaughan and Madeleine were born.
Years after the kids had been born, Cedric noted, “It’s not happiness you find. It’s you. It’s reality. It’s the one real thing. It’s God. All in one. All at the same time. It’s things the way they really are. From then on everything else is just dull as hell in comparison. Nothing else matters more than getting back to what you found... Because what you found is all there really is.”
Well Ralph had found all there was when he spent those days in the monastery. Weddings were not the norm at Holy Spirit, so all the monks were in high excitement. Cedric and Marilyn were married in style less than a month after she arrived. Her family came down from Michigan and northern Ohio. Alexanders and LaBeaufs flew out from Virginia and New York. The DuFresnes and the Sandavauls came from as far away as Metarie and New Orleans. Some from Oklahoma. The Fitzgeralds, who up until that time had scarcely dealt with Cedric Fitzgerald Senior’s son by Gladys, came to the wedding as well.
And then, quick as that, Cedric and Marilyn were gone. They were twenty somethings with wanderlust and no children, and they did as they pleased. Living in Jamnia did not please them. They would come back for holidays.
Ralph went back to seminary. Those years were the unhappiest of his life because he remembered Holy Spirit and how happy he had been. Even when Cedric and Marilyn came to visit- and they did so frequently- he was unhappy because he knew they would leave.
They were at his ordination along with the Hanleys from all over the country, and then Ralph went to work at his first parish, preaching sermons he didn’t mean because those sermons implied that there was some happiness in serving God, and he wasn’t getting so much as a bit of happiness out of the enterprise.
This is what he had told Marilyn when she and Cedric had come to visit during the Christmas of 1979.
“Well how do you know you’re serving God?” Marilyn said.
Ralph had not even dared to speak this to Cedric. He was expecting Marilyn to be comforting. Instead she said, “When did God come down and tell you to go to a seminary you didn’t want and take a job you didn’t like?”
Ralph remained dumbfounded before the beautiful woman’s logic.
“The question wasn’t rhetorical,” Marilyn said.
“You’re as bad as your husband.”
“Thank you,” Marilyn smiled at Ralph. “I’m sure he’d tell you what I’m about to tell you. Do what makes you happy.”
“I haven’t been happy since I was at the monastery.”
“Holy Spirit?”
Ralph nodded.
“Then maybe you should be a friar?” Marilyn suggested. “Maybe?”
As was his way, Ralph hadn’t taken Marilyn seriously until he was miserable beyond belief. He came to visit his mother that Easter, and stopped to stay at the monastery a few days. The day before it was time to leave, Ralph had looked out of his window onto Lake Clare, sobbing, embarrassed to be a thirty year old Black man, a priest no less, bawling alone in a room. He sucked up his misery, washed his face, and prepared to leave for the bus that would take him to the plane that would take him back to his parish.
Abbot Marion, who was now blind as a bat, and couldn’t have heard a thundercloud if it walked up behind him and rumbled, “Boo!” knew sadness, and bobbling on his little staff behind Ralph he asked the young man who was about to leave, “Why are you so sad?”
“I don’t want to leave,” Ralph told him.
Abbot Marion cocked his head and smiled pitifully. Ralph thought the old man was going to say, “Sometimes duty is difficult.”
But what he said is, “Well then why on earth don’t you stay?”
Ralph looked at the old monk in surprise.
Abbot Marion murmured, dotingly, “You silly, silly boy.”
“But... duty. I have a duty to perform, and.… a sacred task.”
Abbot Marion chuckled, “How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Thirty...” Marion murmured, “I can’t even remember forty.... You think you know everything. Don’t you?”
“No, Father Abbot.”
“Liar,” the abbot fingered Ralph’s throat, “Your collar.... I was ordained too. Long ago. I remember. Give a man a Roman collar, and he thinks he knows everything.”
v i
They came back to Michael Street in Ian’s car.
“We can’t be late for the funeral,” Mackenzie said. But Vaughan pointed out that the guest of honor would still be there no matter when they came.
“We’re pall bearers,” Mackenzie reminded Vaughan.
“I was trying to forget.”
Vaughan showered first and then, in his housecoat, went rummaging through his closet for something nice. Ian and Mackenzie showered together.
“Not nearly as sexy as you might think, when both of us have hangovers and we’re in a rush,” Mackenzie pointed out, prosaic. “And no one can agree to the water temperature.”
Before they left, Ian came pelting up the steps.
“Look at me!” he demanded, turning around quickly, and standing still.
“You look nice,” Vaughan said, tying his tie.
“I look better than nice!” Ian exalted. “Kenzie got me this shirt.”
It was almost neon green, and he was in dark forest green slacks with a black tie. “I look.... I kind of look like I could pass for someone handsome.”
“Ian, no one said you were bad looking.”
“I’m not like Mackenzie.”
“Well, no. He’s blond, and blue eyed. And you have dark hair, and- ”
“You know what I mean,” Ian told him.
“I know what you mean,” Vaughan said, reaching for his own blazer. “But that’s because Mackenzie gets dressed up almost every day, and you just started bathing and shaving on a regular basis since you got with him. For you dress up is jeans and a tee shirt and a change of underwear every three days.”
Ian was studying himself in the floor length mirror.
“You just never knew what you looked like until now,” Vaughan told him.
“You think this is what Mackenzie sees when he looks at me?”
“It will be today.”
“You know what I mean,” Ian said. “I always thought Roy would grow up nice looking, but the genes had sort of passed over me. But actually me and Roy look pretty much alike, and I think I’m not bad looking. I mean, I think I never tried cause I never thought there was any use. But, do you think that Mackenzie sees someone... nice looking? When he sees me?”
“If Mackenzie saw anyone nicer looking he’d be barfing up hearts and flowers,” Vaughan said. “He’s in love with you. Listening to him talk about your black eyes and your little beard and crap is like listening to the Song of Solomon.”
“I don’t know the Song of Solomon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vaughan said. And then he said, “And I’m so glad you finally did something with your hair.”
“It’s still wild,” Ian said. “It pops up.”
“There’s a difference between having wild hair,” Vaughan noted, “and just abandoning all hope.”
MORE TOMORROW
“Are you gonna kiss her?” Ian teased his cousin. The two of them along with Mackenzie and Ryan were sitting on the floor of Mackenzie’s long unused bedroom while Mackenzie lay on his back on the bed, looking upside down at them.
“At a funeral?” Roy said, contemptuously, to his cousin.
“Well, you’re not going to be at the funeral the whole time,” Mackenzie pointed out.
“Roy’s gonna get kissed,” Ryan reflected.
“How do you know Roy hasn’t already been kissed?” Ian asked Mackenzie’s younger brother.
Ryan looked quizzically at Roy.
“Stop it already,” Roy said, going red.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Mackenzie, upside down, simpered.
Roy took a pillow and plopped Mackenzie in the face.
“Attacked,” Mackenzie lamented, “in my own room!”
“I love your own room,” Ian said, “but I’m ready to go. You think Vaughan’s ready, now?”
“Probably,” Mackenzie rolled off the bed.
“What’s he doing?” demanded Roy.
It was Ryan who said, “Talking to his mom.”
“What?” Roy looked at his friend.
Ian and Mackenzie looked at each other, trying to figure a way to explain this one anomaly about a friend who was—if not normal—at least one of the more stable things in their life.
“I thought his mom was dead,” Roy said. “In fact I know his mom is dead.”
“It doesn’t seem to stop matters,” Ryan said while the two older boys said nothing.
“He’s always talked to her. About three times a week. And sometimes when he’s asleep she comes to watch.”
Roy looked at Ian and Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded.
“That’s cracked,” Roy said.
“Vaughan’s not crazy,” Mackenzie said. “And if he says he talks to her... Well, he used to say it. He just doesn’t bring it up. But I know he still does it. So I believe him.”
Roy looked at Ian.
“Vaughan’s not nuts,” Ian said. “If he says he’s got a unicorn under his bed, then he does.”
Roy sighed, and Ryan went on.
“She’s real pretty. Most of the time she’s got a white dress. She looks like Madeleine. Only her hair is longer. And she has green eyes.”
“What?” Mackenzie turned to his little brother.
“Vaughan told you all this?” Ian said. It was new to him that Vaughan and Ryan even talked that often.
“Why would he have to?” Ryan wondered, innocently. “You can see her for yourself. Whenever Vaughan’s here. She always shakes her head at Mom and Dad like she wants to scold them.”
Ian and Mackenzie’s eyes looked like they were about to fall out. Roy just stared blankly at his friend.
Suddenly Ryan realized something, and began clapping his hands, laughing like a madman.
“Ry, stop that,” Mackenzie said, a little bothered by his youngest brother spazzing out and confessing to apparitions.
“This is too sweet!” Ryan exulted. “You all can’t see her!”
It was nearly midnight when Vaughan led his friends into the kitchen. He was surprised but only a little by his father, Uncle Ralph and Ida sitting up drinking coffee and smoking the last of their cigarettes. Cedric spooned the remnants of melted ice cream and pie from an apple green bowl.
“I came to check in,” Vaughan told his father.
“Check in as in go to bed?”
“No,” Ian spoke before Vaughan could open his mouth. “Check in as in let you know we’re all alright before we go to Windham Street.” He turned to Ida. Cigarette smoldering, the older woman nodded to Ian.
“Kirk Berghen’s throwing the biggest party over there!” Roy said.
“Kirk Berghen’s always throwing the biggest party over there,” said Cedric. “I thought that’s where you all came from.”
“No we were at a bar,” Vaughan said. “The restaurant part.”
Cedric cocked his head.
“Madeleine vouched for us,” Vaughan explained.
Cedric took a drag from his cigarette.
“And now,” said Vaughan, “we wanna go back out.”
Ida looked at her youngest grandchild, and said to Ryan, “You... are going out?”
Ryan nodded.
“You went to a bar?” she said to the fourteen year old.
Ryan began to redden and stammer.
“Grandma, it was the restaurant part.”
“What’s the world coming to?” Ralph murmured in a tone that could not take itself seriously.
“I don’t know what the world’s coming to, but it’s about time Ryan snuck into his first bar. And you led him?” she said to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
Ida shook her own and murmured, “Aileen always thought you’d be the soft one.”
A little before two in the morning, Vaughan knew they would not be going back to Logan Street or Michael Street tonight. He walked out of the garage, across the weed grown garden into the kitchen of Windham Street, and went up the stairs to the spare room where Ryan and Roy had already given in to the Sandman. Ian and Mackenzie were not long for this world either, Vaughan was sure, as he climbed onto the bed that was usually Ryan’s, and pulled a thin coverlet over himself. Ryan slept on the floor beside Roy.
“Vaughan?” he heard his name in the dark. He was not sure if it was Ryan or Roy.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Do you think Roy could kill someone?”
So it was Ryan.
“Where’d you come up with an oddball question like that?”
“He was telling me... that he had to do something. Say something really important tomorrow. And I thought.... he’s gonna kill somebody.”
“Roy won’t kill anybody,” Vaughan said. “Now go back to sleep. We’ve all got a funeral tomorrow.”
Just then the door flew open, and light filled the room.
“Ahhhhshitttt!” Roy muttered from the floor.
“Come on down right now!” Tina was shouting. “Stearne’s doing a keg stand!”
The morning light cut through George Stearne’s eyelids like a knife. He looked around, and the price he paid was a stabbing pain in his head. But the price was worth it. Yes. He had made it home last night. What would have been unbearable would be to learn that he had passed out in view of many of his students on Windham Street.
Next George Stearne caused himself a great deal of pain by turning to look at the clock on his bed. It was 8:30 in the morning. This meant he could sleep a little longer before the funeral. Part of him debated missing it, but if he did his sister would never let him hear the end of it. Never mind he hadn’t really known the priest.
Half an hour later, George stumbled to the kitchen. From the cut out window looking out onto the half dining room, George saw that he had left Mick passed out on the living room floor, and sunlight was shining on the back of the other man’s head.
George decided it would be best to make enough coffee for the both of them.
As he began spooning coffee into a basket he had- thankfully- cleaned yesterday, the phone rang so shrilly he swore, and from the floor Mick Rafferty swore too.
“Hello?” George groaned. Mick went right back to sleep.
“Yes... unh huh... Yes... Yes... Thank you.”
“Shit,” said George Stearne. He filled the pot with what he hoped was the right amount of water, and prepared to go back to bed.
He didn’t need this. He did not need this. He bypassed the bedroom for the bathroom.
He didn’t need to know right now, after a night of celebration, after being a savior and a drinking god, that he had been wrong, and Luke Madeary could in fact NOT go to Europe.
This was not the first time Luke Madeary had woken up in Kirk Berghen’s garage. Money Caroll was asleep on one side of him, drool hanging from her mouth, her white- woman dreadlocks fuzzy as hell. Tina was asleep, looking peaceful, on the other.
She meant to dye her hair for that funeral she’s got to go to today, Luke thought, looking at the girl’s black hair. She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up and remembers.
He hoped that he had left food out for Old Coconut. Maybe the dog could fend for herself, but she shouldn’t have to. Should she?
Luke grinned in a giddy way.
“I wonder,” he murmured.
“Wonder what?” said Tina, emerging into consciousness. She caught a strand of her still black hair and said, “Fuck! I need to get some Clairol. And pronto.”
Luke grinned at Tina stupidly, and said, “Wonder who’ll watch Coconut when we’re in Europe this fall!”
Ian did not knock on the bathroom door because Roy had left it open. In the manner of someone who is more asleep than awake, Ian briefly noticed his cousin patting his own face and staring at his reflection in the mirror. Ian closed the door, opened his boxers, and pissed loudly while Roy, heedless of it, kept examining himself. While the toilet flushed, Ian came toward the face bowl, shooting the water on, and began washing his hands.
“What are you looking at?” said Ian. But of course when he looked in the mirror he only saw his haggard reflection. The two of them looked alike, but not completely.
“I’m just checking out things,” Roy said.
Ian grinned at his cousin as he shut off the water, shook out his hands, and grabbed a bath towel.
“Rachel will think you’re beautiful,” Ian said, grinning.
Roy grinned back at his cousin, but said, “That’s not what I meant.”
Ida showed up at the house a little before noon, wrapping and unwrapping her red beaded rosary around her fingers. She and Cedric drove to the church, and she said, “Who’s gonna take the kids?”
Cedric, who was not driving, shrugged and played with his tie. “I don’t know. I just thought somebody would work it out.”
At Our Lady of Jamnia, Brothers Mario, Julian and Paul were sitting in the living room. The house smelled like old coffee, and Cedric said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any of you out of habit,” because they were all in black pants and jackets with Roman collars, like priests.
“It’s a shame,” Ida murmured, taking out her cigarettes as she sat down in the battered old chair under the large picture window that looked down on Lyman Street. “I think a bunch of monks in hoods and habits processing into church would have put the fear of God into Our Lady of Jamnia.”
Paul, who looked goofier than ever, smiled and, shrugging, said, “Father Abbot thinks it’s not appropriate for us to wear it outside the house.”
“Now if I was abbot- ” started Mario.
“Good God, we’ve been hearing this for the last fifteen years,” Julian waved it away, and crinkled his red face.
“You know the only reason I didn’t get elected abbot- ” Mario started.
“Is because your name is too close to the last abbot’s,” Julian said, shutting him up.
Ida, cocking her head, and taking a drag from her cigarette, noted, “I see you’ve heard this story before.”
“Did you vote for me?” Mario asked Julian. “After Marion died?”
“No,” Julian said.
“Well to hell with you,” the other monk told him, “I didn’t vote for you either.”
Ralph Hanley came trundling down the stairs and said, “Should we rehearse again?”
“Damnit, Ralph, it’s a funeral, not a fashion show,” Mario said, stamping his cane. “We’re all dressed, Brumbaugh’s still dead. Everything’s the way it should be.”
“It’s lack of planning,” the green eyed priest said, “that can ruin so many ceremonies.”
“Whatever happens,” Mario noted, “he probably won’t care too much.”
“Do we have a Gloria?” Julian asked.
“We always have a Gloria at a funeral,” Ralph said.
“We didn’t have one for Abbot Marion when he died.”
“Yes, we did,” Ralph said.
“No, we didn’t.”
“We did,” Ralph Hanley said flatly.
“Give a man a Roman collar,” Mario told no one in particular, “and he thinks he knows everything.”
Ralph Hanley never knew he was unhappy until he woke up with a bruise on his head from Cedric’s shoe. Cedric, who for years had been his best friend, and then his worst uneasiness, and finally his friend all over again, had made a point. Most people were unhappy and, never having tasted happiness didn’t know how unhappy they were. People were good at forgetting, changing or forsaking their histories as they moved through their present. So even when they tasted happiness by accident, often they forgot the taste, and moved on without it. But sometimes someone was unfortunate enough to be truly, memorably happy, and then that was just no good because, from then on, you knew happiness was out there, and you would do anything to get it back.
Cedric had said this many years into his marriage. But many years still before Vaughan and Madeleine were born.
Years after the kids had been born, Cedric noted, “It’s not happiness you find. It’s you. It’s reality. It’s the one real thing. It’s God. All in one. All at the same time. It’s things the way they really are. From then on everything else is just dull as hell in comparison. Nothing else matters more than getting back to what you found... Because what you found is all there really is.”
Well Ralph had found all there was when he spent those days in the monastery. Weddings were not the norm at Holy Spirit, so all the monks were in high excitement. Cedric and Marilyn were married in style less than a month after she arrived. Her family came down from Michigan and northern Ohio. Alexanders and LaBeaufs flew out from Virginia and New York. The DuFresnes and the Sandavauls came from as far away as Metarie and New Orleans. Some from Oklahoma. The Fitzgeralds, who up until that time had scarcely dealt with Cedric Fitzgerald Senior’s son by Gladys, came to the wedding as well.
And then, quick as that, Cedric and Marilyn were gone. They were twenty somethings with wanderlust and no children, and they did as they pleased. Living in Jamnia did not please them. They would come back for holidays.
Ralph went back to seminary. Those years were the unhappiest of his life because he remembered Holy Spirit and how happy he had been. Even when Cedric and Marilyn came to visit- and they did so frequently- he was unhappy because he knew they would leave.
They were at his ordination along with the Hanleys from all over the country, and then Ralph went to work at his first parish, preaching sermons he didn’t mean because those sermons implied that there was some happiness in serving God, and he wasn’t getting so much as a bit of happiness out of the enterprise.
This is what he had told Marilyn when she and Cedric had come to visit during the Christmas of 1979.
“Well how do you know you’re serving God?” Marilyn said.
Ralph had not even dared to speak this to Cedric. He was expecting Marilyn to be comforting. Instead she said, “When did God come down and tell you to go to a seminary you didn’t want and take a job you didn’t like?”
Ralph remained dumbfounded before the beautiful woman’s logic.
“The question wasn’t rhetorical,” Marilyn said.
“You’re as bad as your husband.”
“Thank you,” Marilyn smiled at Ralph. “I’m sure he’d tell you what I’m about to tell you. Do what makes you happy.”
“I haven’t been happy since I was at the monastery.”
“Holy Spirit?”
Ralph nodded.
“Then maybe you should be a friar?” Marilyn suggested. “Maybe?”
As was his way, Ralph hadn’t taken Marilyn seriously until he was miserable beyond belief. He came to visit his mother that Easter, and stopped to stay at the monastery a few days. The day before it was time to leave, Ralph had looked out of his window onto Lake Clare, sobbing, embarrassed to be a thirty year old Black man, a priest no less, bawling alone in a room. He sucked up his misery, washed his face, and prepared to leave for the bus that would take him to the plane that would take him back to his parish.
Abbot Marion, who was now blind as a bat, and couldn’t have heard a thundercloud if it walked up behind him and rumbled, “Boo!” knew sadness, and bobbling on his little staff behind Ralph he asked the young man who was about to leave, “Why are you so sad?”
“I don’t want to leave,” Ralph told him.
Abbot Marion cocked his head and smiled pitifully. Ralph thought the old man was going to say, “Sometimes duty is difficult.”
But what he said is, “Well then why on earth don’t you stay?”
Ralph looked at the old monk in surprise.
Abbot Marion murmured, dotingly, “You silly, silly boy.”
“But... duty. I have a duty to perform, and.… a sacred task.”
Abbot Marion chuckled, “How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Thirty...” Marion murmured, “I can’t even remember forty.... You think you know everything. Don’t you?”
“No, Father Abbot.”
“Liar,” the abbot fingered Ralph’s throat, “Your collar.... I was ordained too. Long ago. I remember. Give a man a Roman collar, and he thinks he knows everything.”
v i
They came back to Michael Street in Ian’s car.
“We can’t be late for the funeral,” Mackenzie said. But Vaughan pointed out that the guest of honor would still be there no matter when they came.
“We’re pall bearers,” Mackenzie reminded Vaughan.
“I was trying to forget.”
Vaughan showered first and then, in his housecoat, went rummaging through his closet for something nice. Ian and Mackenzie showered together.
“Not nearly as sexy as you might think, when both of us have hangovers and we’re in a rush,” Mackenzie pointed out, prosaic. “And no one can agree to the water temperature.”
Before they left, Ian came pelting up the steps.
“Look at me!” he demanded, turning around quickly, and standing still.
“You look nice,” Vaughan said, tying his tie.
“I look better than nice!” Ian exalted. “Kenzie got me this shirt.”
It was almost neon green, and he was in dark forest green slacks with a black tie. “I look.... I kind of look like I could pass for someone handsome.”
“Ian, no one said you were bad looking.”
“I’m not like Mackenzie.”
“Well, no. He’s blond, and blue eyed. And you have dark hair, and- ”
“You know what I mean,” Ian told him.
“I know what you mean,” Vaughan said, reaching for his own blazer. “But that’s because Mackenzie gets dressed up almost every day, and you just started bathing and shaving on a regular basis since you got with him. For you dress up is jeans and a tee shirt and a change of underwear every three days.”
Ian was studying himself in the floor length mirror.
“You just never knew what you looked like until now,” Vaughan told him.
“You think this is what Mackenzie sees when he looks at me?”
“It will be today.”
“You know what I mean,” Ian said. “I always thought Roy would grow up nice looking, but the genes had sort of passed over me. But actually me and Roy look pretty much alike, and I think I’m not bad looking. I mean, I think I never tried cause I never thought there was any use. But, do you think that Mackenzie sees someone... nice looking? When he sees me?”
“If Mackenzie saw anyone nicer looking he’d be barfing up hearts and flowers,” Vaughan said. “He’s in love with you. Listening to him talk about your black eyes and your little beard and crap is like listening to the Song of Solomon.”
“I don’t know the Song of Solomon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vaughan said. And then he said, “And I’m so glad you finally did something with your hair.”
“It’s still wild,” Ian said. “It pops up.”
“There’s a difference between having wild hair,” Vaughan noted, “and just abandoning all hope.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a very well done portion! It was nice reading about the past and present again. I am liking how this last chapter is progressing and I look forward to more tomorrow! Great writing and I hope you have a nice week!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
The past and the present all come together. I'm glad you had fun. I had fun sharing it. There are more revelations to ocme. It's not over till its over!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, ROY HAD A BURNING BLADDER BUT BURNING QUESTIONS TAKE PRECEDENCE, AND GEORGE STEARNE FEELS BAD, BUT NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK....
Margaret Stearne had taken her seat right beside the Foster’s. Aileen was surprised that the woman had not spoken a word the entire funeral. Ever since high school, George Stearne’s oldest sister had known everyone’s business, and never thought twice about discussing it anywhere. This ought to have been a field day for her. Nearly everyone in town was present for the old priest’s funeral, and so this was an occasion that should have elicited more chatter than ever.
Aileen herself was looking around. Her mother and Cedric were sitting right in front of her, in the first row, looking as if they weren’t looking around. Aileen knew better. Race Cane and Roy were a few seats behind and Roy was with... yes, a Black girl. This must have been his date. But the boy looked distracted, as if he had a mission. And very grownup in his dark blue suit.
Aileen looked at Kevin, who was distractedly tapping his tooth, and realized that her husband had on a dark blue suit too.
The greatest satisfaction Aileen got was at the end of the funeral when Vaughan, Mackenzie, Ian, and a few others carried out the polished oak casket, and Nadine Bueller said, “I know that one is Cedric Fitzgerald’s son, but who’s that attractive boy in the green on the other side of Kenzie.”
“Oh,” Aileen said carelessly, “that’s my son’s boyfriend.”
“I’m really glad you came,” Roy told Rachel.
She could tell he meant it. His voice was full of appreciation, and his hand caught hers. Then he let go and dropped his eyes. When he did Rachel DuFresne, in the living room of the parish house, realized how much she’d liked looking into them.
“I don’t even know you that well,” he said.
“Well, shit, Roy, you just grabbed my hand. It’s not like you asked to have sex with me.”
He chuckled, then turned away, looking sharp like an animal that had caught a scent and turned back to her. He was still smiling, but to Rachel he looked a little distracted.
“Is there something wrong?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Roy shook his head. “No. I just think I wanna get some punch. I’ll get some for you.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You can stay right here.”
“I thank you for your gallantry, Roy. But I think I can be troubled to walk across the room.”
So things were going well, and they were deciding what to do after the funeral when Roy said, “Could I be excused?”
“Did you break wind?” Rachel asked him.
“No,” Roy went red. “I just wanted to... relieve myself.”
“I wish you’d talk normal.”
“I’m trying to be decent. Like a date.”
“It’s just me.”
“I have to pee.”
“I know what ‘relieve yourself’ means,” Rachel told him.
“Then why did you make me say I have to pee?”
“No one made you say anything, Roy,” Rachel told him. “Now go pee. And when you get finished let me know so I can too.”
“Would you like to go first?”
“No, Roy, that’s quite alright. Why don’t you?”
So Roy went off to go pee, and the bathroom door opened, and Kevin Foster came out. Roy looked up, Kevin looked down.
“How are you Roy?” Kevin asked him. Roy could still hear the toilet flushing.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Kevin said directly. “You look like you just stumbled into the dead, and I might not be the most alive thing in western Ohio, but I’m not dead yet.”
And then Kevin broke into a smile, which for some reason disconcerted Roy even more.
“Now, what’s up?” Kevin said.
Roy opened his mouth, swallowed, and then said, feeling his bladder tingling, “I decided. That I was going to say something to you... ask you something.”
“Alright?” Kevin said.
Roy realized by the look on Kevin’s face he was about to hit the man from left field.
“If I’m wrong,” Roy began, “then I’m sorry. I’m out of line, but, I don’t think I’m wrong and if I am, like I said, then I am sorry. I’m not trying to say anything by it. It’s just- ”
“Roy,” Kevin said simply, “spit it out.”
“Are you my Dad?”
Kevin did look as if he’d been hit between the eyes, and then he said, “Well, yes, Roy. I am.”
IAN, VAUGHAN, AND MACKENZIE WERE talking in a small circle when they heard Rachel DuFresne shout out, “Roy!” and then Roy nearly knocked them over.
“Roy, what’s up?” Ian said, grabbing his cousin by the shoulders. But the smaller boy shook him off, and headed out the door.
Rachel looked at Vaughan, and her cousin looked back at her about to ask if they’d fought when they saw Kevin Foster pushing his way through the room, looking shocked, and Ian looked up at Mackenzie’s father, and said, “Sir, what’s going on?”
Race Cane was right behind her nephew, looking from Kevin, to the door. Aileen, her mother, and her aunts had stopped talking and now joined the small knot of people. Aileen and Race both looked at each other, and then they looked at Kevin.
“You told him,” Race said.
“He found out,” Kevin said, confused.
“Well it had to happen sooner or later,” Aileen murmured.
“Please,” Ian said, sounding a little desperate while Mackenzie and Vaughan tried to say nothing, “Found out what?”
“WHAT?” SAID TINA, IN THE midst of a Blackjack game with Father Julian, Kirk Berghen, Luke and Money Carroll.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
“You’ve got to be fucking me,” Tina said, and then turned to Father Julian. “Excuse the language.”
“Excused,” he told her.
“Good, because: ” she looked at her cards, and threw one down, “Blackjack. Pay up, Padre.” Now, while she held her hand out for the money, she said, “Where is he?”
Ian was coming up behind Mackenzie.
“Ian, where is Roy?” Tina demanded.
“I don’t know, Tina.”
“Thank you, Father,” she said. Julian. Kirk and Money set to playing a new hand while Tina strategized other matters.
“Luke,” she said, “we gotta go. Roy Cane is missing.”
Rachel DuFresne came up with her cousins and said, “Excuse me, but what is going on? Did I do something?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Tina told her, slipping into her leather jacket. “My dad did.”
Rachel looked confused.
“See,” Tina explained, reaching into her pocket for her car keys, “it turns out Roy’s not an only child after all. He’s our brother.”
“Well, I’ll be fucked!” Kirk Berghen cried, looking up from his game with Julian and Money. Then at the look of embarrassment on Money’s face, added, “Excuse the language, Father.”
“Excused,” Julian said.
“Good- ”
“Because,” Julian continued, “Blackjack!”
George Stearne and his sister saw Luke and Tina pelting out the door, and George cried out: “What’s going on?”
“I gotta go get my brother,” Tina said.
“Mackenzie’s right over there.”
“It is so much more to explain,” Tina told him. “And I will. But not right now. I have to go.”
Luke headed out the door, and then said, daring to hug George Stearne quickly, “I want to thank you so much for that whole Europe thing. I didn’t think I had any hope until that. I just told the gas station I’d be quitting at the end of May!”
And then he was gone.
Margaret turned to her brother, and said, “George, you look horrible, what’s wrong?”
What Ashley had managed to glean before leaving the funeral was that Ian Cane’s little cousin was her father’s illegitimate son. It was strange, a little farfetched, but, as she knew, not something entirely beyond the pale in a town this small. People fucked everywhere, but in a town like Jamnia, where your choices were so limited, your fucking always came back to you.
Like take this funeral which she had to leave. Thank God Rodder was in Chicago, because so far she’d seen Bone McArthur, George Stearne, and Mick Rafferty, and the more she looked around the more she saw the majority of men who had fucked her. She had to get out. The nastiest clencher was walking out the door while Mick was on one side and George Stearne was on the other, the certainty that they were both leering at each other over her. Of all the things she could do she took the bus across town to Willow Park Mall. When she felt like this, which was beginning to be all the time, she’d walk through the mall and look at people, make up stories about them. She left her money at home though, wisely.
The days were getting longer, but it was still chilly when she left through the J.C. Penney’s where the bus stopped after dipping off of the incline of Willow Park Road and into the parking lot.
One bus had just roared off. Ashley shrugged, and sat down on an old, paint chipped bench.
A car came by playing some crap off one of the pop stations, and as the window rolled down, Ashley saw the half handsome, half silly face of Derrick Todd.
“Hey, Ash! Get in!”
Ashley stood up and, coming to the window said, “It’s alright. I’ll just wait for the bus. Thanks.”
“You mean the bus that just left about ten minutes ago?” Derrick said, and then told her, “I didn’t always have a car. I know the schedule.”
“The next one’ll be here in a few minutes,” Ashley told him.
Derrick shook his head. “It’s the weekend. They only come once an hour.” He reached across the passenger seat and opened the door, “Get in.”
Ashley did, and fastened her seat belt.
“I’m not really listening to this,” Derrick told her, “so you can switch stations.”
“This is fine,” Ashley said. Then, “You know all the stations are bad around here anyway.”
Derrick chuckled, and nodded as they rose up out of the lot and headed south, down the slope of Willow Parkway, “You’re right about that.
“So am I taking you home, or do you have some hot place to go?” Derrick said as they reached the intersection with Michael Street.
“Someplace hot?” Ashley said.
“You know. You’re Ashley Foster and everything.”
She laughed and said, “And this is Jamnia and nothing. I’m going home is all.”
“Alright,” Derrick said. The light changed, and he turned a broad left. “All aboard for Michael Street.”
When they came to the plum colored house on Logan, Ashley said, “Would you like to come in for a second? I see Tina’s here. Luke probably is too.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’d be the first,” Ashley said. Then, at the look on his face, explained, “The first who didn’t want to impose. Come on in.”
When they did come through the side door, Tina was standing at the counter with a cigarette, and Luke was sitting at the kitchen table.
Tina looked from Ashley to Derrick, and said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Don’t be rude all the time,” Ashley said.
Tina made a face.
“Any luck with Roy?” Ashley said.
“What?” said Derrick. So Tina told him everything.
“Roy Cane is your little brother? That’s wild.”
“Um hum,” Tina noted, blandly.
“I guess,” Ashley said. “I got enough brothers as it is. Ross is going to have a heart attack. Or kill somebody.”
“Why?” said Derrick.
“First, because he and Roy got into a fight a long time ago,” Ashley said. “And he hates Roy. And then because… I don’t know Roy’s birthday exactly, but apparently Race Cane was pregnant the same time Mom was pregnant with Ross.”
“Oh, shit,” Tina said. “Damnit, that’s right. They’re practically twins.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out what?” Ross said coming down the stairs behind Ryan.
Ashley stammered. Derrick and Luke looked to each other. Tina, who had always wished she had another brother in place of Ross just said, “We finally found out who Roy Cane’s father is.”
“That’s right,” Ross grinned at the same time Ryan did. Tina noted that two smiles could not have been more different. “The little fucker’s a bastard.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ashley said wearily.
“Wash your snatch,” Ross muttered. Lindsay was coming down the stairs, and Ross turned around and told her about Roy.
“Great,” she said. And then, seeing Derrick, she sneered and added, “Let’s throw a party.”
“I don’t know if you want to throw a party,” Derrick said, and the way he said it made both Ashley and Tina laugh. Luke snorted.
“What?” Ross said, suddenly sounding pissed. “What’s up?”
“Smile, Ross,” Tina said, dropping the laugh. “You got a new brother.”
“What?” Ross said, not catching on.
But Ryan caught on, and judging by the horror in Lindsay’s eyes, both of her sisters knew she did too.
“I should have known!” Ryan exulted, in all of his innocence, “I should have known!” His voice was high. “His eyes. And he walks like Dad too! I should have known!”
“Oh, fuck this!” Ross declared, taking the other extreme.
“Roy’s my brother!” Ryan went on.
“Shut up!” Ross said.
Ryan turned to his older brother grinning, “And his birthday’s the same as yours!” Ryan said. “That means Dad and his mom were together at the same time mom was pregnant with you!”
Ryan knew that had to hurt.
Tina stepped between the two of them sensing that Ross might attempt something, and then she told her youngest brother, earnestly, “Roy isn’t so thrilled. He’s ashamed, and he left the funeral. And no one knows where he is.”
“Oh, I do,” Ryan said confidently. “I’ll go get my jacket, and bring him back. Hold on.”
“I’ll be in the car,” Tina said.
“No,” Ryan said, cheerfully. “You’d better let me do this. He’ll come back if it’s just me.”
Ryan hopped on his bike and rode up Logan until he made a right turn on Michael, and sped up the street, legs pumping until he got to Logan, rode north to where Logan met Main, and Windmill Cereal Plant where his mom worked stood across from the Hasty Tasty Diner where Roy’s mom worked. And then the pink bricked, columned, public library lay on Main across from Hasty Tasty.
Ryan did not lock his bike. He propped it in the bushes, and went into the building. The air conditioning was already on though summer was months away.
Roy knew where to go. He went to the end of the library until he had found the chivalry section, and then went down the aisle, looked to his left and to his right, and there found Roy, sitting under a low shelf of books.
“I found you,” Ryan announced triumphantly.
Roy looked less than pleased.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“It’s a public library,” Ryan said, “I thought that I was the public, and I think I can be here if I want.”
“Oh, God, Ryan!” Roy shut the book. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything that’s happened.”
“Yes, I do,” Ryan said, simply. “Tina told me. She’s told everyone.”
“Great! Fucking great!” Roy moaned. “This fucks everything up.”
“Why?”
“Ryan, you’re so stupid!” Roy snapped. His voice went deadly and he hissed, “No wonder you don’t have any friends. No wonder everyone says you’re such a spaz. You don’t get anything. Don’t you know what all this means?”
But Roy’s mouth had gotten ahead of himself, and he saw tears spring up in the same blue eyes that belonged to him. At the sight Roy’s throat constricted. He was so sorry. He wanted nothing more than to break down and cry too. He wanted to take all his words away.
“It means you’re my brother,” Ryan said simply. “I’m sorry if that upsets you. I’m sorry for being a spaz and an idiot. I’m sorry I’m not popular enough and good enough for you and- ”
“Ryan, I’m sorry,” Roy stood up.
“Fuck off!” Ryan told him, fiercely, and turned around.
Roy shot up and caught him by the wrist.
“Let me go,” he hissed, still mindful they were in a library.
“No,” Roy said gently. “I’m sorry. There’s been enough running around today. Look at me, Ry. Look at me,” he said again.
Ryan turned to him.
“I’m a idiot and I’m a spaz. And I’m the one who doesn’t have anyone but you. And.… And I’m the disgrace. That’s what I meant. I’m like this little bit of fun that your dad was having on the side. That’s what I meant.”
Ryan was looking at him, paying attention.
“How would you feel,” Roy said, “if you finally had friends for the first time, and then it turned out they were your family? Only they were better than you because your mom was whoring around behind their mom’s back and you were... the product? God, do you know what that makes me?”
“It makes you my brother.” Ryan repeated.
George Stearne watched a man down at the other end of the bar inhale, and exhale a swift gush of cigarette smoke.
“God, I need a cigarette about now!” he told Mick Rafferty.
“Why?” said Mick. “Out of everyone in Jamnia, you’re probably the one furthest removed from a difficult problem. Did I catch all that right, or is Roy Cane—? ”
“Roy Cane,” George Stearne said, “is Roy Foster.”
“Poor kid.”
Stearne shrugged. “He’s known all his life he was illegitimate. He had to suspect his dad lived in town. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. People suspected.”
“Like who?”
“Like my sister. Like everyone,” Stearne said. “But what no one gets about small cities is... unlike small towns everyone doesn’t really know everyone. You know someone who knows someone. That’s one difference. And then we’re more polite. Half the town might know a secret, and just be too polite to say anything.”
“Until now,” Mick Rafferty said.
“Until now,” Stearne agreed. “And here I am talking about Kevin Foster’s shit because it’s easier than talking about mine.”
“Ashley?”
Stearne dismissed that. “She’s everyone’s shit. My shit is that I told Luke Madeary he was going to Europe with Tina.”
“Yeah, the whole trip thing.”
“And now the son of a bitch who told me we had room for him tells me they don’t. He can’t go. And Luke has already tendered his resignation at the gas station, and is the happiest kid on earth.”
“Shit,” Mick said. “That’s bad.”
Stearne took a sip from his beer mug, and nodded.
“Yes, that’s real bad.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT, BELOVEDS....
Margaret Stearne had taken her seat right beside the Foster’s. Aileen was surprised that the woman had not spoken a word the entire funeral. Ever since high school, George Stearne’s oldest sister had known everyone’s business, and never thought twice about discussing it anywhere. This ought to have been a field day for her. Nearly everyone in town was present for the old priest’s funeral, and so this was an occasion that should have elicited more chatter than ever.
Aileen herself was looking around. Her mother and Cedric were sitting right in front of her, in the first row, looking as if they weren’t looking around. Aileen knew better. Race Cane and Roy were a few seats behind and Roy was with... yes, a Black girl. This must have been his date. But the boy looked distracted, as if he had a mission. And very grownup in his dark blue suit.
Aileen looked at Kevin, who was distractedly tapping his tooth, and realized that her husband had on a dark blue suit too.
The greatest satisfaction Aileen got was at the end of the funeral when Vaughan, Mackenzie, Ian, and a few others carried out the polished oak casket, and Nadine Bueller said, “I know that one is Cedric Fitzgerald’s son, but who’s that attractive boy in the green on the other side of Kenzie.”
“Oh,” Aileen said carelessly, “that’s my son’s boyfriend.”
“I’m really glad you came,” Roy told Rachel.
She could tell he meant it. His voice was full of appreciation, and his hand caught hers. Then he let go and dropped his eyes. When he did Rachel DuFresne, in the living room of the parish house, realized how much she’d liked looking into them.
“I don’t even know you that well,” he said.
“Well, shit, Roy, you just grabbed my hand. It’s not like you asked to have sex with me.”
He chuckled, then turned away, looking sharp like an animal that had caught a scent and turned back to her. He was still smiling, but to Rachel he looked a little distracted.
“Is there something wrong?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Roy shook his head. “No. I just think I wanna get some punch. I’ll get some for you.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You can stay right here.”
“I thank you for your gallantry, Roy. But I think I can be troubled to walk across the room.”
So things were going well, and they were deciding what to do after the funeral when Roy said, “Could I be excused?”
“Did you break wind?” Rachel asked him.
“No,” Roy went red. “I just wanted to... relieve myself.”
“I wish you’d talk normal.”
“I’m trying to be decent. Like a date.”
“It’s just me.”
“I have to pee.”
“I know what ‘relieve yourself’ means,” Rachel told him.
“Then why did you make me say I have to pee?”
“No one made you say anything, Roy,” Rachel told him. “Now go pee. And when you get finished let me know so I can too.”
“Would you like to go first?”
“No, Roy, that’s quite alright. Why don’t you?”
So Roy went off to go pee, and the bathroom door opened, and Kevin Foster came out. Roy looked up, Kevin looked down.
“How are you Roy?” Kevin asked him. Roy could still hear the toilet flushing.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Kevin said directly. “You look like you just stumbled into the dead, and I might not be the most alive thing in western Ohio, but I’m not dead yet.”
And then Kevin broke into a smile, which for some reason disconcerted Roy even more.
“Now, what’s up?” Kevin said.
Roy opened his mouth, swallowed, and then said, feeling his bladder tingling, “I decided. That I was going to say something to you... ask you something.”
“Alright?” Kevin said.
Roy realized by the look on Kevin’s face he was about to hit the man from left field.
“If I’m wrong,” Roy began, “then I’m sorry. I’m out of line, but, I don’t think I’m wrong and if I am, like I said, then I am sorry. I’m not trying to say anything by it. It’s just- ”
“Roy,” Kevin said simply, “spit it out.”
“Are you my Dad?”
Kevin did look as if he’d been hit between the eyes, and then he said, “Well, yes, Roy. I am.”
IAN, VAUGHAN, AND MACKENZIE WERE talking in a small circle when they heard Rachel DuFresne shout out, “Roy!” and then Roy nearly knocked them over.
“Roy, what’s up?” Ian said, grabbing his cousin by the shoulders. But the smaller boy shook him off, and headed out the door.
Rachel looked at Vaughan, and her cousin looked back at her about to ask if they’d fought when they saw Kevin Foster pushing his way through the room, looking shocked, and Ian looked up at Mackenzie’s father, and said, “Sir, what’s going on?”
Race Cane was right behind her nephew, looking from Kevin, to the door. Aileen, her mother, and her aunts had stopped talking and now joined the small knot of people. Aileen and Race both looked at each other, and then they looked at Kevin.
“You told him,” Race said.
“He found out,” Kevin said, confused.
“Well it had to happen sooner or later,” Aileen murmured.
“Please,” Ian said, sounding a little desperate while Mackenzie and Vaughan tried to say nothing, “Found out what?”
“WHAT?” SAID TINA, IN THE midst of a Blackjack game with Father Julian, Kirk Berghen, Luke and Money Carroll.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
“You’ve got to be fucking me,” Tina said, and then turned to Father Julian. “Excuse the language.”
“Excused,” he told her.
“Good, because: ” she looked at her cards, and threw one down, “Blackjack. Pay up, Padre.” Now, while she held her hand out for the money, she said, “Where is he?”
Ian was coming up behind Mackenzie.
“Ian, where is Roy?” Tina demanded.
“I don’t know, Tina.”
“Thank you, Father,” she said. Julian. Kirk and Money set to playing a new hand while Tina strategized other matters.
“Luke,” she said, “we gotta go. Roy Cane is missing.”
Rachel DuFresne came up with her cousins and said, “Excuse me, but what is going on? Did I do something?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Tina told her, slipping into her leather jacket. “My dad did.”
Rachel looked confused.
“See,” Tina explained, reaching into her pocket for her car keys, “it turns out Roy’s not an only child after all. He’s our brother.”
“Well, I’ll be fucked!” Kirk Berghen cried, looking up from his game with Julian and Money. Then at the look of embarrassment on Money’s face, added, “Excuse the language, Father.”
“Excused,” Julian said.
“Good- ”
“Because,” Julian continued, “Blackjack!”
George Stearne and his sister saw Luke and Tina pelting out the door, and George cried out: “What’s going on?”
“I gotta go get my brother,” Tina said.
“Mackenzie’s right over there.”
“It is so much more to explain,” Tina told him. “And I will. But not right now. I have to go.”
Luke headed out the door, and then said, daring to hug George Stearne quickly, “I want to thank you so much for that whole Europe thing. I didn’t think I had any hope until that. I just told the gas station I’d be quitting at the end of May!”
And then he was gone.
Margaret turned to her brother, and said, “George, you look horrible, what’s wrong?”
What Ashley had managed to glean before leaving the funeral was that Ian Cane’s little cousin was her father’s illegitimate son. It was strange, a little farfetched, but, as she knew, not something entirely beyond the pale in a town this small. People fucked everywhere, but in a town like Jamnia, where your choices were so limited, your fucking always came back to you.
Like take this funeral which she had to leave. Thank God Rodder was in Chicago, because so far she’d seen Bone McArthur, George Stearne, and Mick Rafferty, and the more she looked around the more she saw the majority of men who had fucked her. She had to get out. The nastiest clencher was walking out the door while Mick was on one side and George Stearne was on the other, the certainty that they were both leering at each other over her. Of all the things she could do she took the bus across town to Willow Park Mall. When she felt like this, which was beginning to be all the time, she’d walk through the mall and look at people, make up stories about them. She left her money at home though, wisely.
The days were getting longer, but it was still chilly when she left through the J.C. Penney’s where the bus stopped after dipping off of the incline of Willow Park Road and into the parking lot.
One bus had just roared off. Ashley shrugged, and sat down on an old, paint chipped bench.
A car came by playing some crap off one of the pop stations, and as the window rolled down, Ashley saw the half handsome, half silly face of Derrick Todd.
“Hey, Ash! Get in!”
Ashley stood up and, coming to the window said, “It’s alright. I’ll just wait for the bus. Thanks.”
“You mean the bus that just left about ten minutes ago?” Derrick said, and then told her, “I didn’t always have a car. I know the schedule.”
“The next one’ll be here in a few minutes,” Ashley told him.
Derrick shook his head. “It’s the weekend. They only come once an hour.” He reached across the passenger seat and opened the door, “Get in.”
Ashley did, and fastened her seat belt.
“I’m not really listening to this,” Derrick told her, “so you can switch stations.”
“This is fine,” Ashley said. Then, “You know all the stations are bad around here anyway.”
Derrick chuckled, and nodded as they rose up out of the lot and headed south, down the slope of Willow Parkway, “You’re right about that.
“So am I taking you home, or do you have some hot place to go?” Derrick said as they reached the intersection with Michael Street.
“Someplace hot?” Ashley said.
“You know. You’re Ashley Foster and everything.”
She laughed and said, “And this is Jamnia and nothing. I’m going home is all.”
“Alright,” Derrick said. The light changed, and he turned a broad left. “All aboard for Michael Street.”
When they came to the plum colored house on Logan, Ashley said, “Would you like to come in for a second? I see Tina’s here. Luke probably is too.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’d be the first,” Ashley said. Then, at the look on his face, explained, “The first who didn’t want to impose. Come on in.”
When they did come through the side door, Tina was standing at the counter with a cigarette, and Luke was sitting at the kitchen table.
Tina looked from Ashley to Derrick, and said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Don’t be rude all the time,” Ashley said.
Tina made a face.
“Any luck with Roy?” Ashley said.
“What?” said Derrick. So Tina told him everything.
“Roy Cane is your little brother? That’s wild.”
“Um hum,” Tina noted, blandly.
“I guess,” Ashley said. “I got enough brothers as it is. Ross is going to have a heart attack. Or kill somebody.”
“Why?” said Derrick.
“First, because he and Roy got into a fight a long time ago,” Ashley said. “And he hates Roy. And then because… I don’t know Roy’s birthday exactly, but apparently Race Cane was pregnant the same time Mom was pregnant with Ross.”
“Oh, shit,” Tina said. “Damnit, that’s right. They’re practically twins.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out what?” Ross said coming down the stairs behind Ryan.
Ashley stammered. Derrick and Luke looked to each other. Tina, who had always wished she had another brother in place of Ross just said, “We finally found out who Roy Cane’s father is.”
“That’s right,” Ross grinned at the same time Ryan did. Tina noted that two smiles could not have been more different. “The little fucker’s a bastard.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ashley said wearily.
“Wash your snatch,” Ross muttered. Lindsay was coming down the stairs, and Ross turned around and told her about Roy.
“Great,” she said. And then, seeing Derrick, she sneered and added, “Let’s throw a party.”
“I don’t know if you want to throw a party,” Derrick said, and the way he said it made both Ashley and Tina laugh. Luke snorted.
“What?” Ross said, suddenly sounding pissed. “What’s up?”
“Smile, Ross,” Tina said, dropping the laugh. “You got a new brother.”
“What?” Ross said, not catching on.
But Ryan caught on, and judging by the horror in Lindsay’s eyes, both of her sisters knew she did too.
“I should have known!” Ryan exulted, in all of his innocence, “I should have known!” His voice was high. “His eyes. And he walks like Dad too! I should have known!”
“Oh, fuck this!” Ross declared, taking the other extreme.
“Roy’s my brother!” Ryan went on.
“Shut up!” Ross said.
Ryan turned to his older brother grinning, “And his birthday’s the same as yours!” Ryan said. “That means Dad and his mom were together at the same time mom was pregnant with you!”
Ryan knew that had to hurt.
Tina stepped between the two of them sensing that Ross might attempt something, and then she told her youngest brother, earnestly, “Roy isn’t so thrilled. He’s ashamed, and he left the funeral. And no one knows where he is.”
“Oh, I do,” Ryan said confidently. “I’ll go get my jacket, and bring him back. Hold on.”
“I’ll be in the car,” Tina said.
“No,” Ryan said, cheerfully. “You’d better let me do this. He’ll come back if it’s just me.”
Ryan hopped on his bike and rode up Logan until he made a right turn on Michael, and sped up the street, legs pumping until he got to Logan, rode north to where Logan met Main, and Windmill Cereal Plant where his mom worked stood across from the Hasty Tasty Diner where Roy’s mom worked. And then the pink bricked, columned, public library lay on Main across from Hasty Tasty.
Ryan did not lock his bike. He propped it in the bushes, and went into the building. The air conditioning was already on though summer was months away.
Roy knew where to go. He went to the end of the library until he had found the chivalry section, and then went down the aisle, looked to his left and to his right, and there found Roy, sitting under a low shelf of books.
“I found you,” Ryan announced triumphantly.
Roy looked less than pleased.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“It’s a public library,” Ryan said, “I thought that I was the public, and I think I can be here if I want.”
“Oh, God, Ryan!” Roy shut the book. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything that’s happened.”
“Yes, I do,” Ryan said, simply. “Tina told me. She’s told everyone.”
“Great! Fucking great!” Roy moaned. “This fucks everything up.”
“Why?”
“Ryan, you’re so stupid!” Roy snapped. His voice went deadly and he hissed, “No wonder you don’t have any friends. No wonder everyone says you’re such a spaz. You don’t get anything. Don’t you know what all this means?”
But Roy’s mouth had gotten ahead of himself, and he saw tears spring up in the same blue eyes that belonged to him. At the sight Roy’s throat constricted. He was so sorry. He wanted nothing more than to break down and cry too. He wanted to take all his words away.
“It means you’re my brother,” Ryan said simply. “I’m sorry if that upsets you. I’m sorry for being a spaz and an idiot. I’m sorry I’m not popular enough and good enough for you and- ”
“Ryan, I’m sorry,” Roy stood up.
“Fuck off!” Ryan told him, fiercely, and turned around.
Roy shot up and caught him by the wrist.
“Let me go,” he hissed, still mindful they were in a library.
“No,” Roy said gently. “I’m sorry. There’s been enough running around today. Look at me, Ry. Look at me,” he said again.
Ryan turned to him.
“I’m a idiot and I’m a spaz. And I’m the one who doesn’t have anyone but you. And.… And I’m the disgrace. That’s what I meant. I’m like this little bit of fun that your dad was having on the side. That’s what I meant.”
Ryan was looking at him, paying attention.
“How would you feel,” Roy said, “if you finally had friends for the first time, and then it turned out they were your family? Only they were better than you because your mom was whoring around behind their mom’s back and you were... the product? God, do you know what that makes me?”
“It makes you my brother.” Ryan repeated.
George Stearne watched a man down at the other end of the bar inhale, and exhale a swift gush of cigarette smoke.
“God, I need a cigarette about now!” he told Mick Rafferty.
“Why?” said Mick. “Out of everyone in Jamnia, you’re probably the one furthest removed from a difficult problem. Did I catch all that right, or is Roy Cane—? ”
“Roy Cane,” George Stearne said, “is Roy Foster.”
“Poor kid.”
Stearne shrugged. “He’s known all his life he was illegitimate. He had to suspect his dad lived in town. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. People suspected.”
“Like who?”
“Like my sister. Like everyone,” Stearne said. “But what no one gets about small cities is... unlike small towns everyone doesn’t really know everyone. You know someone who knows someone. That’s one difference. And then we’re more polite. Half the town might know a secret, and just be too polite to say anything.”
“Until now,” Mick Rafferty said.
“Until now,” Stearne agreed. “And here I am talking about Kevin Foster’s shit because it’s easier than talking about mine.”
“Ashley?”
Stearne dismissed that. “She’s everyone’s shit. My shit is that I told Luke Madeary he was going to Europe with Tina.”
“Yeah, the whole trip thing.”
“And now the son of a bitch who told me we had room for him tells me they don’t. He can’t go. And Luke has already tendered his resignation at the gas station, and is the happiest kid on earth.”
“Shit,” Mick said. “That’s bad.”
Stearne took a sip from his beer mug, and nodded.
“Yes, that’s real bad.”
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT, BELOVEDS....
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Wow that was a big surprise about Roy being Kevin's son! Everything is up in the air and I hope Roy doesn't do anything silly. Poor Luke! Thinking he is going to Europe when he isn't. I hope he can get his job back. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, in the end I guess it wasn't a total surprise for anyone. Stearne says the town suspected, we've already done the whole story of Kevin and Race's affair and Aileen knowing about his baby, and of course, even Roy knew deep inside. And yet, it still managed to feel like a surprise.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT ROY MEETS HIS FAMILY FOR THE FIRST TIME AS A MEMBER OF THE FAMILY, AND ASHLEY MAKES A STAB AT A NEW LIFE WHILE TINA.... JUST MAKES A STAB
KEVIN WAS THE FIRST PERSON to the side door when Roy and Ryan stepped in. He looked down at both of them, and then held them together by their shoulders.
He looked at Roy.
“Are you all right?”
Roy didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“Ryan, I’m proud of you,” Kevin said to his other son. “I promise, Roy, I’ll tell you everything. Make everything clear. Come on in. Both of you. Come inside.”
Roy felt a strange case of stage fright. It seemed that everyone was in the kitchen. Derrick Todd was here, and Ross stood back looking venomous. His mother was beside Ryan’s mother, and Mackenzie and Ian were there. Oddly enough, not only was Mackenzie’s grandmother there, but so was Cedric Fitzgerald who never set foot in the house on Logan Street. Not for reasons of personal grudge, but just because he didn’t.
“Roy, please, don’t run off like that again,” Aileen said. “I may not be your mother, but I’m a little something close to it. I think.”
“You are not!” Ross snapped. Aileen turned a sharp glance on her son. Ross swallowed, but continued to speak.
“I don’t believe all of you. It’s like this is the prodigal son or something instead of what he is. Which is a bastard.”
Kevin roared at him the same time Aileen did and Roy went pale.
“I didn’t like Roy Cane when I got out of bed this morning, and I’m not going to like him when I go to bed tonight. And I’m definitely not going to call him my brother just because Dad couldn’t keep his pants up sixteen years ago.”
“That’s enough,” Aileen’s voice was deadly calm.
“You’ll never be part of this family,” Ross continued. “And, Mom, you’re the one who should be madder than anyone else instead of accepting all of this. Are you gonna start having him over to dinner every night?”
“Roy does come to dinner every night,” Aileen pointed out.
“Throw him a birthday party too.”
“I had planned to,” Aileen said.
“I can’t believe you,” Ross went on. “What’s next?” he turned to Ida. “Is grandma gonna start sending him big ole presents every Christmas, and saving up money for him?” Ross turned to Roy, who was still standing there pale and silent. No one had broken Ross’s tirade. “That’s right, Roy. Some of us have a family that cares for us. I’ve got five thousand dollars in a trust fund because when you have a real family, in real families grandparents and aunts and uncles save up for you, and you know you’re part of something. What are you part of, Roy?”
Here Ida began clearing her throat, and it was a little while before everyone realized that she was trying to call attention to herself.
“Actually,” Ida told her grandson, “I’ve heard that Roy’s trust fund has about a thousand more dollars in it than yours.”
This was news to Roy, and Ross looked a little confused, then said, “How would you know?” He wasn’t totally disrespectful. He wouldn’t shout at his grandmother.
“I’d know the same way I know about Tina’s, and Ashley’s, and Lindsay’s, and Ryan’s and Kenzie’s, and yours,” Ida said, simply. “Because I’m the one who built it.”
“What?”
“Grandma?” Mackenzie turned to Ida, “How long have you known?”
“I’ve always known,” she shrugged.
“Mom?” Tina said.
“I accepted things quickly,” Aileen said. “And moved on.”
“You...” Roy said to Aileen. “You knew?”
Aileen nodded. Then she felt there was a need to speak. “When you showed up at the door as Ryan’s new friend I thought... this must be providence. You all getting along so well. He never really had an older brother before. Now, I’m sorry Kenzie, I don’t mean to say you were a bad older brother but you always had Vaughan, and then you were so busy being Tina’s younger brother. In a house of six kids that’s the way it is. All Ryan ever had was Ross and well...” Aileen put a hand out to gesture toward her second son, “we see what Ross is like.”
“Open your mouth, Ross,” Kevin said, “And I’ll hit you.”
“When I was pregnant,” Race said, “my parents disowned me.”
Ian made a small noise here, surprised.
“Ida came to me, and she told me she would help me out. That she wasn’t buying me off. That she would help me no matter what happened=”
“You mean if Dad left Mom for you or not?” Ross said.
Race thought about smacking the boy, but only said, “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“You’re a creep, you know that?” Ian interjected toward Ross.
“Ian, please,” Race said. “Ida told me she would help me out no matter, and that was great because my parents, your grandparents,” she said to Ian, “had cut me off, and at the time, Kevin already had four kids. He couldn’t possibly support this new one. And Ida said that one day Roy would have to know the truth, and when that day came he shouldn’t feel like an outcast. He should have the same things as his brothers and sisters. The same little privileges and presents- ”
“Every year,” Roy broke in, turning to Ida, “the presents. Every Christmas.”
Ida nodded simply.
“I need to sit down,” Roy said. Tina shifted in her chair, and Roy sat down next to her.
“But you didn’t have to do all that,” he told Ida.
“In a way I did,” Ida said. “Just decency, just looking out for my family. And Roy, one thing you may not understand is how closely most of us in this room are related. You see, your grandfather—not Samir, but the Colonel, was with my mother. And my youngest sister, Alice, is also Kevin’s sister.”
“What?” Tina said.
“We never really talk about it,” Aileen said. “But I remember when Colonel came with the gun all those years ago.”
“The gun?” Mackenzie said.
“When I was pregnant with Tina and Ashley. The thing that turned him away from harassing me and Kev was that Alice came out to fight him... His own daughter.”
Nodding, Ida continued, “So you, Roy, may not be blood, and I’m not sure that this matters, but my sister is your aunt, my grandchildren are your siblings, and my daughter’s your stepmother, and regardless of how anyone feels about it,” her eyes roved the room, “my grandson is something more than a friend to your cousin. So that makes me owe a little something to you... I think.”
Roy nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Vaughan looked at his father. “Did you know? You must have.”
“This,” Cedric began, “was the one thing Ida never told me— ”
“I’m sorry, Ced,” said Ida. “I didn’t think it was my place—”
“—no matter how many years I wondered if she would. Sometimes I thought she didn’t know, herself, and wondered if I should tell her.”
Kevin looked straight at Cedric and said, “How did you know?”
“You confessed it to Ralph. Most of it. Ralph didn’t know it was you, Kevin. But he told me about it. However I had just seen you leaving the church looking distracted. And then Ida had said some things. So I put two and two together. And I remembered you and Race had had a history. And then I heard she was mysteriously pregnant with no father in sight. It was really easy enough to forget the whole story until Ian popped up, and then I realized he was too old to be the child. Then Roy showed up, and I was pretty sure he had to be yours.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?” said Ida.
“Well, neither did you,” said Cedric. “Besides, believe it or not, I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. I figured everything would come out when it needed to. If it needed to.”
“Dad, you’re a marvel,” Vaughan declared.
Roy just kept shaking his head and saying, “I’m sorry I ran out. I was just... there’s so much to take in. So much to do.”
“Yes,” Vaughan told him. “Starting with calling up my cousin, and apologizing for ditching her in the middle of the funeral.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m awful!” Roy cried. “I need to call her now. She should hit me in the face. No, I need to see her. Mom,” he turned to Kevin, not knowing what to call him. “Does anyone mind if I’m excused for a while? Ian, could you give me a ride down to Rachel’s to say I’m sorry?”
Ian looked at Mackenzie for a second, and then nodded and said, “Let’s roll.”
“It’s cool,” Rachel said. She came to the door in jeans and a tee shirt. “Especially under the circumstances, and with you coming to say you’re sorry. But next time, I’ll cut you.”
“Understood,” Roy told her.
“Oh,” Rachel said, “Understand this, too.”
He was still dressed up, and Rachel grabbed him by the tie, pulled him into the house, and kissed him full on the lips. Then she pushed him out, and slammed the door.
Roy stood, dazed. The door opened again.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” Rachel said. “Bye.”
And that was the end of that.
v i i
ASHLEY FOSTER HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT her trust fund, and now the knowledge that she was not poor, or at least not as poor as she had thought she was, made her feel a little better.
She did not go out that Saturday night, but instead went to bed early. She had been feeling desperate lately, feeling that something had to change, that shit could not go on the way it had been going, and now she realized that this was true. Something did have to change. Everything had to change. Things were changing regardless if she liked it or not. That was just the way of the world. She’d change with it.
She did not go to church on Sunday because she did not want to. It seemed sort of hypocritical after all anyway. So she slept all day, and that night lay in bed tossing and turning and plotting.
Plotting change.
Ashley swallowed her pride and went to school with Tina, and Claudia, and Madeleine that morning. She had wanted to call Bone up and get a ride, but then this meant Bone would expect something, and she really wasn’t in the mood to give him anything.
Ashley lagged behind the rest of them, wanting to loiter in that parking lot, waiting for that one particular car to appear. To her great embarrassment it was Rodder’s that came as soon as Tina parked the LTD, and it was Rodder who hopped out of the car, and threw his arms around Madeleine when she came to him.
“It’s really almost enough to make you hurl, isn’t it?” Tina said to Claudia, who nodded in agreement.
“Hello, ladies,” Rodder greeted them. His peat green eyes fell on Ashley, always a little uncomfortable with her. He tried to sound decent, “Hello, Ashley.”
“Rodder.”
Ashley decided to go inside the school a while, wait on the other side of the lobby’s glass doors. And then she saw the car come up, and Derrick Todd hop out and wave, she presumed, at her sister and her sister’s friends.
Ashley made like she was coming out of the glass doors as he was coming in.
“Ashley, excuse me!”
“Oh, my gosh,” Ashley said, “I nearly knocked your book bag right off of you.”
“No matter,” he shrugged.
“That’s good,” she said. “I was hoping I’d see you anyway.”
She saw Madeleine and Rodder, Tina and Claudia coming toward the steps and thought, Shit, let’s hurry this up!
“I wanted to know what you were doing Friday?”
“Nothing,” Derrick said. “Not that I know of.”
Ashley laughed and said, “You wanna do nothing with me?”
Derrick’s eyes widened. His smile was real. This guy was real. He said, “Yeah. Yeah. I’d like that.”
They were coming up the steps. Ashley didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want to be seen by them.
“Great,” she made a phone sign with her thumb and baby finger sticking out. “I’ll call you.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “Great.” But even as he was nodding, she was fleeing.
The glass doors came open. Rodder patted Derrick on the back and said, “Hey, what’s up man?”
“You’ll never believe this,” Derrick told him....
“I DON’T BELIEVE IT,” DICE Mc Cafferty said, shaking his head, and biting into what passed for a burger in the school cafeteria.
“But isn’t Derrick a virgin?” Rick said, sounding more concerned than he had ever sounded about anyone’s chastity.
Rodder nodded.
“Well, not for long,” Bone chuckled.
Dice looked earnestly across the table at his friend.
“Dice, I know they’re your cousins, but really... to go from Lindsay to Ashley?”
“To know Ashley is to fuck her,” Rick quoted.
“You know what?” Rodder said, “If it wasn’t my business, and it wasn’t completely out of line, I’d warn him.”
“Shit, Rod, warn him about what? Oooh, Derrick, you’re gonna get laid! He knows. You knew when you were with her, Rod.”
“Could we switch the subject?” Dice said.
“Thank you,” Rodder agreed.
“Still,” Dice said, before taking his own advice, “he’s a good guy. I mean... I sort of think that someone like Derrick probably isn’t going to want his first time to be with...”
“Everyone else’s first time?” said Rick, chuckling.
“Yeah, Rick,” Dice hopped across the table, and pounded him in the shoulder, “Everyone else’s first time.”
“Shit,” Rick said, rubbing his shoulder. “You didn’t have to be like that about it.”
Tina was brunette with hennaed hair today. The play was a few days away. She had been brunette for the funeral, but touched it up Saturday night with the help of Ida, and Race Cane. She was in the hallway talking with Mackenzie, Ian, Roy and Vaughan on her way to chemistry when she saw Ashley, and called out to her.
“Yes, Tina?”
“I want you to know,” Tina said, “I heard about your little stunt.”
“What are you talking about?” Ashley was instantly afraid because there was actually any number of little stunts Tina might have heard about.
“You leave that boy alone,” Tina warned. Rodder and his friends were now approaching, drawn to the spectacle of the two opposite sisters, their gay brother, his love, and half the town gossip gathered in one place.
“What are you talking about?” Ashley was shrill.
“I’m talking about Derrick Todd,” Tina said. “He is young, he is innocent, and he is whole lot better than your trashy ass.”
“You are such a bitch!” Ashley declared.
“And what’s more,” Tina continued, “if you fuck that boy, I will rip your clitoris out from between your legs, and make sure you keep your pussy poison from anybody else. Are we clear?”
“Fuck you!” Ashley said.
“I don’t care who you fuck as long as you stay away from Derrick Todd. Now are we clear?”
Ashley humphed, and walked away, muttering, “Bitch.”
“Takes one to know one,” Tina muttered.
“Well,” Dice murmured, crossing his arms over his chest, “I guess we don’t have to worry about warning Derrick anymore, do we?”
“Maybe I should warn him myself,” Tina said.
“Oh, you wouldn’t- ” Dice began. Then, “You would!”
“And I will,” Tina resolved.
The bell for next period rang off over their heads.
“We’re all late for class now,” Mackenzie said. Then he turned to Roy with an arch look and said, “Welcome to the family.”
MORE TOMORROW
KEVIN WAS THE FIRST PERSON to the side door when Roy and Ryan stepped in. He looked down at both of them, and then held them together by their shoulders.
He looked at Roy.
“Are you all right?”
Roy didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“Ryan, I’m proud of you,” Kevin said to his other son. “I promise, Roy, I’ll tell you everything. Make everything clear. Come on in. Both of you. Come inside.”
Roy felt a strange case of stage fright. It seemed that everyone was in the kitchen. Derrick Todd was here, and Ross stood back looking venomous. His mother was beside Ryan’s mother, and Mackenzie and Ian were there. Oddly enough, not only was Mackenzie’s grandmother there, but so was Cedric Fitzgerald who never set foot in the house on Logan Street. Not for reasons of personal grudge, but just because he didn’t.
“Roy, please, don’t run off like that again,” Aileen said. “I may not be your mother, but I’m a little something close to it. I think.”
“You are not!” Ross snapped. Aileen turned a sharp glance on her son. Ross swallowed, but continued to speak.
“I don’t believe all of you. It’s like this is the prodigal son or something instead of what he is. Which is a bastard.”
Kevin roared at him the same time Aileen did and Roy went pale.
“I didn’t like Roy Cane when I got out of bed this morning, and I’m not going to like him when I go to bed tonight. And I’m definitely not going to call him my brother just because Dad couldn’t keep his pants up sixteen years ago.”
“That’s enough,” Aileen’s voice was deadly calm.
“You’ll never be part of this family,” Ross continued. “And, Mom, you’re the one who should be madder than anyone else instead of accepting all of this. Are you gonna start having him over to dinner every night?”
“Roy does come to dinner every night,” Aileen pointed out.
“Throw him a birthday party too.”
“I had planned to,” Aileen said.
“I can’t believe you,” Ross went on. “What’s next?” he turned to Ida. “Is grandma gonna start sending him big ole presents every Christmas, and saving up money for him?” Ross turned to Roy, who was still standing there pale and silent. No one had broken Ross’s tirade. “That’s right, Roy. Some of us have a family that cares for us. I’ve got five thousand dollars in a trust fund because when you have a real family, in real families grandparents and aunts and uncles save up for you, and you know you’re part of something. What are you part of, Roy?”
Here Ida began clearing her throat, and it was a little while before everyone realized that she was trying to call attention to herself.
“Actually,” Ida told her grandson, “I’ve heard that Roy’s trust fund has about a thousand more dollars in it than yours.”
This was news to Roy, and Ross looked a little confused, then said, “How would you know?” He wasn’t totally disrespectful. He wouldn’t shout at his grandmother.
“I’d know the same way I know about Tina’s, and Ashley’s, and Lindsay’s, and Ryan’s and Kenzie’s, and yours,” Ida said, simply. “Because I’m the one who built it.”
“What?”
“Grandma?” Mackenzie turned to Ida, “How long have you known?”
“I’ve always known,” she shrugged.
“Mom?” Tina said.
“I accepted things quickly,” Aileen said. “And moved on.”
“You...” Roy said to Aileen. “You knew?”
Aileen nodded. Then she felt there was a need to speak. “When you showed up at the door as Ryan’s new friend I thought... this must be providence. You all getting along so well. He never really had an older brother before. Now, I’m sorry Kenzie, I don’t mean to say you were a bad older brother but you always had Vaughan, and then you were so busy being Tina’s younger brother. In a house of six kids that’s the way it is. All Ryan ever had was Ross and well...” Aileen put a hand out to gesture toward her second son, “we see what Ross is like.”
“Open your mouth, Ross,” Kevin said, “And I’ll hit you.”
“When I was pregnant,” Race said, “my parents disowned me.”
Ian made a small noise here, surprised.
“Ida came to me, and she told me she would help me out. That she wasn’t buying me off. That she would help me no matter what happened=”
“You mean if Dad left Mom for you or not?” Ross said.
Race thought about smacking the boy, but only said, “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“You’re a creep, you know that?” Ian interjected toward Ross.
“Ian, please,” Race said. “Ida told me she would help me out no matter, and that was great because my parents, your grandparents,” she said to Ian, “had cut me off, and at the time, Kevin already had four kids. He couldn’t possibly support this new one. And Ida said that one day Roy would have to know the truth, and when that day came he shouldn’t feel like an outcast. He should have the same things as his brothers and sisters. The same little privileges and presents- ”
“Every year,” Roy broke in, turning to Ida, “the presents. Every Christmas.”
Ida nodded simply.
“I need to sit down,” Roy said. Tina shifted in her chair, and Roy sat down next to her.
“But you didn’t have to do all that,” he told Ida.
“In a way I did,” Ida said. “Just decency, just looking out for my family. And Roy, one thing you may not understand is how closely most of us in this room are related. You see, your grandfather—not Samir, but the Colonel, was with my mother. And my youngest sister, Alice, is also Kevin’s sister.”
“What?” Tina said.
“We never really talk about it,” Aileen said. “But I remember when Colonel came with the gun all those years ago.”
“The gun?” Mackenzie said.
“When I was pregnant with Tina and Ashley. The thing that turned him away from harassing me and Kev was that Alice came out to fight him... His own daughter.”
Nodding, Ida continued, “So you, Roy, may not be blood, and I’m not sure that this matters, but my sister is your aunt, my grandchildren are your siblings, and my daughter’s your stepmother, and regardless of how anyone feels about it,” her eyes roved the room, “my grandson is something more than a friend to your cousin. So that makes me owe a little something to you... I think.”
Roy nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Vaughan looked at his father. “Did you know? You must have.”
“This,” Cedric began, “was the one thing Ida never told me— ”
“I’m sorry, Ced,” said Ida. “I didn’t think it was my place—”
“—no matter how many years I wondered if she would. Sometimes I thought she didn’t know, herself, and wondered if I should tell her.”
Kevin looked straight at Cedric and said, “How did you know?”
“You confessed it to Ralph. Most of it. Ralph didn’t know it was you, Kevin. But he told me about it. However I had just seen you leaving the church looking distracted. And then Ida had said some things. So I put two and two together. And I remembered you and Race had had a history. And then I heard she was mysteriously pregnant with no father in sight. It was really easy enough to forget the whole story until Ian popped up, and then I realized he was too old to be the child. Then Roy showed up, and I was pretty sure he had to be yours.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?” said Ida.
“Well, neither did you,” said Cedric. “Besides, believe it or not, I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. I figured everything would come out when it needed to. If it needed to.”
“Dad, you’re a marvel,” Vaughan declared.
Roy just kept shaking his head and saying, “I’m sorry I ran out. I was just... there’s so much to take in. So much to do.”
“Yes,” Vaughan told him. “Starting with calling up my cousin, and apologizing for ditching her in the middle of the funeral.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m awful!” Roy cried. “I need to call her now. She should hit me in the face. No, I need to see her. Mom,” he turned to Kevin, not knowing what to call him. “Does anyone mind if I’m excused for a while? Ian, could you give me a ride down to Rachel’s to say I’m sorry?”
Ian looked at Mackenzie for a second, and then nodded and said, “Let’s roll.”
“It’s cool,” Rachel said. She came to the door in jeans and a tee shirt. “Especially under the circumstances, and with you coming to say you’re sorry. But next time, I’ll cut you.”
“Understood,” Roy told her.
“Oh,” Rachel said, “Understand this, too.”
He was still dressed up, and Rachel grabbed him by the tie, pulled him into the house, and kissed him full on the lips. Then she pushed him out, and slammed the door.
Roy stood, dazed. The door opened again.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” Rachel said. “Bye.”
And that was the end of that.
v i i
ASHLEY FOSTER HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT her trust fund, and now the knowledge that she was not poor, or at least not as poor as she had thought she was, made her feel a little better.
She did not go out that Saturday night, but instead went to bed early. She had been feeling desperate lately, feeling that something had to change, that shit could not go on the way it had been going, and now she realized that this was true. Something did have to change. Everything had to change. Things were changing regardless if she liked it or not. That was just the way of the world. She’d change with it.
She did not go to church on Sunday because she did not want to. It seemed sort of hypocritical after all anyway. So she slept all day, and that night lay in bed tossing and turning and plotting.
Plotting change.
Ashley swallowed her pride and went to school with Tina, and Claudia, and Madeleine that morning. She had wanted to call Bone up and get a ride, but then this meant Bone would expect something, and she really wasn’t in the mood to give him anything.
Ashley lagged behind the rest of them, wanting to loiter in that parking lot, waiting for that one particular car to appear. To her great embarrassment it was Rodder’s that came as soon as Tina parked the LTD, and it was Rodder who hopped out of the car, and threw his arms around Madeleine when she came to him.
“It’s really almost enough to make you hurl, isn’t it?” Tina said to Claudia, who nodded in agreement.
“Hello, ladies,” Rodder greeted them. His peat green eyes fell on Ashley, always a little uncomfortable with her. He tried to sound decent, “Hello, Ashley.”
“Rodder.”
Ashley decided to go inside the school a while, wait on the other side of the lobby’s glass doors. And then she saw the car come up, and Derrick Todd hop out and wave, she presumed, at her sister and her sister’s friends.
Ashley made like she was coming out of the glass doors as he was coming in.
“Ashley, excuse me!”
“Oh, my gosh,” Ashley said, “I nearly knocked your book bag right off of you.”
“No matter,” he shrugged.
“That’s good,” she said. “I was hoping I’d see you anyway.”
She saw Madeleine and Rodder, Tina and Claudia coming toward the steps and thought, Shit, let’s hurry this up!
“I wanted to know what you were doing Friday?”
“Nothing,” Derrick said. “Not that I know of.”
Ashley laughed and said, “You wanna do nothing with me?”
Derrick’s eyes widened. His smile was real. This guy was real. He said, “Yeah. Yeah. I’d like that.”
They were coming up the steps. Ashley didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want to be seen by them.
“Great,” she made a phone sign with her thumb and baby finger sticking out. “I’ll call you.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “Great.” But even as he was nodding, she was fleeing.
The glass doors came open. Rodder patted Derrick on the back and said, “Hey, what’s up man?”
“You’ll never believe this,” Derrick told him....
“I DON’T BELIEVE IT,” DICE Mc Cafferty said, shaking his head, and biting into what passed for a burger in the school cafeteria.
“But isn’t Derrick a virgin?” Rick said, sounding more concerned than he had ever sounded about anyone’s chastity.
Rodder nodded.
“Well, not for long,” Bone chuckled.
Dice looked earnestly across the table at his friend.
“Dice, I know they’re your cousins, but really... to go from Lindsay to Ashley?”
“To know Ashley is to fuck her,” Rick quoted.
“You know what?” Rodder said, “If it wasn’t my business, and it wasn’t completely out of line, I’d warn him.”
“Shit, Rod, warn him about what? Oooh, Derrick, you’re gonna get laid! He knows. You knew when you were with her, Rod.”
“Could we switch the subject?” Dice said.
“Thank you,” Rodder agreed.
“Still,” Dice said, before taking his own advice, “he’s a good guy. I mean... I sort of think that someone like Derrick probably isn’t going to want his first time to be with...”
“Everyone else’s first time?” said Rick, chuckling.
“Yeah, Rick,” Dice hopped across the table, and pounded him in the shoulder, “Everyone else’s first time.”
“Shit,” Rick said, rubbing his shoulder. “You didn’t have to be like that about it.”
Tina was brunette with hennaed hair today. The play was a few days away. She had been brunette for the funeral, but touched it up Saturday night with the help of Ida, and Race Cane. She was in the hallway talking with Mackenzie, Ian, Roy and Vaughan on her way to chemistry when she saw Ashley, and called out to her.
“Yes, Tina?”
“I want you to know,” Tina said, “I heard about your little stunt.”
“What are you talking about?” Ashley was instantly afraid because there was actually any number of little stunts Tina might have heard about.
“You leave that boy alone,” Tina warned. Rodder and his friends were now approaching, drawn to the spectacle of the two opposite sisters, their gay brother, his love, and half the town gossip gathered in one place.
“What are you talking about?” Ashley was shrill.
“I’m talking about Derrick Todd,” Tina said. “He is young, he is innocent, and he is whole lot better than your trashy ass.”
“You are such a bitch!” Ashley declared.
“And what’s more,” Tina continued, “if you fuck that boy, I will rip your clitoris out from between your legs, and make sure you keep your pussy poison from anybody else. Are we clear?”
“Fuck you!” Ashley said.
“I don’t care who you fuck as long as you stay away from Derrick Todd. Now are we clear?”
Ashley humphed, and walked away, muttering, “Bitch.”
“Takes one to know one,” Tina muttered.
“Well,” Dice murmured, crossing his arms over his chest, “I guess we don’t have to worry about warning Derrick anymore, do we?”
“Maybe I should warn him myself,” Tina said.
“Oh, you wouldn’t- ” Dice began. Then, “You would!”
“And I will,” Tina resolved.
The bell for next period rang off over their heads.
“We’re all late for class now,” Mackenzie said. Then he turned to Roy with an arch look and said, “Welcome to the family.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
You were right Tina did make a stab! I am very curious to see what happens with Ashley and Derrick. I am glad most of Roy's now known new family members accept him. Ida is one great lady. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow. I hope you are having a nice week. 
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Ida is pretty damn awesome. I forgot how awesome she was. What will become of this unlikely union of Ashley and Derrick? Hopefully good things. I hope you had a great read after a long day. Yes, I m a having a lovely time and... more tomorrow
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CLAUDIA LEARNS A THING OR TWO, ASHLEY TRIES TO RUMBLE AND FAILS, AND MICK FEELS LIKE SHIT...
WHEN THE BOYS CAME HOME after school, it was Vaughan who saw it first, and picked up on what it was. Cedric was in the yard, picking up bits and pieces so Vaughan knew his father had just seen it himself.
“What the- ?” Ian started, and Mackenzie placed a hand on his shoulder.
The gate to the Fitzgerald house was open, and on the green grass was a CD player, a portable television, blankets, piles of clothes on hangers, pillows, and a few completely useless things like toy trucks and, as Ian saw coming into the yard, clothes too small to wear.
“What’s going on?” Roy murmured to Mackenzie, his new brother.
Ian readjusted his backpack, and began picking up things, not saying a word. They were all his. He came up the stairs with the CD player and the portable TV stacked on top of it. Behind him he felt the steps of Mackenzie, Vaughan and his cousin. He dropped off his things in the spare room as Mackenzie was entering with a pile of clothes, and then he went out into the hall, and down to the kitchen.
“Your father came,” Cedric said, pulling a cigarette out from the pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen table, and taking one for himself, then passing one to Ian. He always knew the right thing to do.
“He dropped all of this off?” Ian said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Cedric passed him the lighter. He knew that Ian needed to be tough at this moment.
“I gotta go over there,” Ian said, lighting the cigarette as his friends came into the kitchen.
“We got the rest of the stuff,” Roy told his cousin.
“Please don’t go over there,” Cedric said.
Ian exhaled, and shouted, “He threw me out!”
“That’s right,” Cedric said, never losing his calm. “A not so subtle message. But you can be subtler. Don’t go over there starting something, alright?”
“Ian, can I talk to you?” Mackenzie said, and took the other boy back into their room.
“What, Kenzie?” Ian’s words were quick and clipped, which meant he wanted to cry, and Mackenzie wanted to hold him, but he suspected Ian wanted to cry alone. They were too alike here.
“Cedric’s right,” Mackenzie said. “You don’t need to go over there starting something. You weren’t living there anyway.”
“It’s my house!” his voice broke now.
“This is your house!” Mackenzie said, jabbing the mattress he sat on. “This is your house. Where you’re safe, where you’ve been living. Don’t be stupid, E.”
“You think my old man might kill me,” Ian said. “But I’m the one who’s got the gun.”
“I think someone might kill someone,” Mackenzie said. “And I wouldn’t put it past you to pull the trigger. I really wouldn’t. So I’m begging you to stay right here. Don’t go over there without one of us. Don’t go over there at all.”
“Kenzie- ”
“If you love me,” Mackenzie said.
Ian’s chest rose up. Then it fell. He cracked a smile. “You’re playing dirty now.”
“I don’t care. You owe this to me. You owe it to Cedric. Chill out, alright?”
When Ian didn’t say anything, Mackenzie repeated, “Alright?”
Ian sighed, “Fuck!” he said, “Alright, already.”
Race’s feet were in pain from the bulk of an eight hour shift across the street at Hasty Tasty when she walked into Windmill Cereal Plant.
Aileen was coming close to quitting time, and dreading going to class tonight.
“Race?” she said, a little surprised.
“Roy just came by,” Race told Aileen. And then she told Aileen everything that Roy had told her.
“I don’t believe it,” Aileen muttered.
“Well, I do,” said Race.
When Race Cane got home she called up her brother, and told him that he was the most worthlessmotherfuckingsonofabitch who ever walked the face of the earth... and then some.
When Aileen got home she called up the Fitzgeralds and told Mackenzie that Ian and Roy were coming to dinner that night.
“Mom, you’ve got class,” Mackenzie told her.
“Thanks, I always thought I could pass for Ginger Rogers.”
“I meant- ”
“I know what you meant, Mackenzie. I’ll take an absence. I don’t feel like going.”
“I don’t think you should skip,” Mackenzie told his mother, earnestly.
“I don’t think it’s your decision,” said Aileen. “Come on over as soon as possible.”
“Can Vaughan come over?”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course he can.”
Aileen hung up.
But as it turned out, Vaughan did not come. At least not immediately. He was trying to finish The Iliad because, as he explained, he had started it and even though he didn’t like it that well, he’d better end it. Tina was not home at all that night. Ashley was, and in a strangely fine mood. Ross hung around like a mean dog, and when he came into Ryan’s room, where the boys were talking, getting ready to go downstairs, Mackenzie felt sure something was about to happen. He looked at Roy and Ian. You just couldn’t judge what the Canes were going to do. When something happened to one it happened to the other, and they were both hotheaded and upset. It didn’t matter that Roy was, Mackenzie remembered, his brother. He was still a Cane, and there was trouble all over the room. Even Ryan’s ears, so like Kevin’s, pricked up when Ross entered.
“Mom wanted me to tell you to come down,” Ross said. “She’s almost finished cooking. She’s so pleased about everything. She’s feeling all this sympathy. Her fag son is home tonight. And her husband’s bastard on some towelhead came to visit too.”
“Ross, cool it,” Ryan said.
“The retard speaks,” Ross noted.
The boys got up to go to the kitchen, choosing to ignore Ross.
“Ross just says things like that to make himself feel better,” Mackenzie told them as if his younger brother weren’t there.
“Thanks, Doctor Fag,” Ross saluted his brother.
They all left the room quietly, and as Ian left he slammed Ross’s head into the lentil of the door quickly.
“I hate you,” he told him.
“Ian, stop,” Mackenzie said.
“Yeah, Ian, stop,” Ross mimicked, which was very unwise because Ian knocked him into the lentil again.
“I fucking hate you. I wish you would die,” Ian told him. His hand moved down to Ross’s throat.
“Hey stop!” Ross suddenly realized Ian was about business as the other boy shoved him into the lentil.
“Hey, why don’t you call me a towelhead and a fag? Go ahead. You want to. Call me a fucking Lebanese Faggot. Just do it. Make a few Syrian jokes. Go ahead. Say something about Pink Terrorists. Say something...” he slammed Ross’s head into the door. “...witty,” Ian finished with another thud that made a sickening sound.
“Hey, knock it off!” Ross cried.
“What’s going on up there!” Aileen shouted up the stairs.
Ian let Ross go.
“Nothing, Mom,” Mackenzie shouted down, weakly.
“Well then get down here and make drinks,” Aileen called. “And Ryan, set the table.”
Ian sighed, released Ross and sank off of the balls of his feet. To Mackenzie he sounded the way he did after coming. Except for Ryan the boys headed down the stairs, looking back at Ian every once in a while to make sure he didn’t go back to pound on Ross some more. Ian had scared them all, and was embarrassed at his behavior. But he’d wanted to hurt someone. And Ross had been conveniently present.
Ross was rubbing his throat and trying to swallow, attempting to disengage embarrassment from terror when Ashley’s door opened, and she said, “Ross?”
Ross turned around.
“I think,” she suggested, “it might be wise if you didn’t fuck with them anymore.”
Then Ashley smiled, and closed the door.
When the bill came, Rodder picked it up and read it off, then told everyone gathered round the table, his girlfriend, her cousin Claudia, Tina and Luke, “I think we should give her at least a two dollar tip.”
“Oh, don’t be so cheap, Rod!” Claudia said. “She put up with us, didn’t she?”
Claudia reached into her purse, pulling out a wallet. She was digging around in it while talking. “I can afford to be generous. Hakim decided to show me I was his girl by giving me his wallet tonight.”
Madeleine turned to Rodder.
“There are so many other ways,” he said, clearing his throat, “of telling a girl you love her.”
“Say it with diamonds,” Tina murmured.
“Five, six,” Claudia murmured, “and let me get some change and—What the hell is this?” Her voice changed as she stared into the wallet.
Luke looking clinically over Claudia’s shoulder said, “I believe it’s a condom.”
“Oh, shit,” Tina and Madeleine murmured together.
“Maybe it’s for you,” Rodder suggested feebly.
“Maybe I better talk to Hakim as soon as possible,” Claudia said.
That night over the phone, Drew Marsh told Mackenzie, “Ian’s got me scared.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“I never would have told him, but now I’m wondering. What happens when my parents find out?”
“I thought you said you were moving in with Simon.”
“I am,” Drew said. “But I don’t mean where will I live. I mean... what if they found out? If they knew what I was. Right now they love me. But what about when they find out?” Drew was whispering over the phone.
“Ian’s parents are different,” Mackenzie said.
“You’ve never met my parents,” Drew said.
“It’ll be alright,” Mackenzie told him, not believing himself because, of course, he didn’t know Drew’s parents. He knew his, and with them it certainly had not been alright.
Which Drew Marsh saw fit to point out.
“You left home, Kenzie. Everything fell apart.”
“And now everything’s coming back together. Look Drew, it’ll be alright.”
There was silence over the phone, and then Drew Marsh said, “Mackenzie, I’ve never been scared about this. Not in two years. Not until now.”
“Don’t be scared,” Mackenzie said quickly. “We’re your friends. A little far away… but we’re here. Always. I promise.”
“Ask Vaughan to pray for me,” Drew said.
“Hello,” Claudia said later that night in her bedroom in the house of Cedric’s sister on Price Street. “Is Hakim there? Yes. Thank you.” A few seconds passed. Claudia took in a few deep breaths to calm her self, and then tried to hum a Yolanda Adams song. To no avail.
Hakim greeted her, “What’s up, baby?”
“Hakim,” Claudia said. “You need to start talking. Right now!”
THAT FRIDAY MORNING THEY WERE all rehearsing the details of who was going where, and Madeleine was thinking of ways to get out of her coffee house gig so she could see Tina and Mackenzie’s play. Tina smelled something in the air. She had been just about to say, “Don’t you dare cancel your gig. The show runs for three nights—” when she stopped, and they turned around to see Claudia.
“Where’s your sister?” Claudia said to Tina.
“Which one?”
“The bitch.”
“Which one?” Tina repeated.
“The ho.”
“Oh, I think I saw her near Bone McArthur’s locker. Why?”
“I’m gon beat her ass,” Claudia said frankly. “Is that gon be a problem?” She was taking off her rings.
“I don’t think so,” Tina said.
Claudia dropped her rings off in Madeleine’s hands, and said, “I’ll be back.”
She put her book bag down and started walking down the hall where she almost bumped into Roy and Rachel.
“What’s up?” Rachel said.
Claudia told Roy, “I’m gon beat your sister’s ass.”
While Roy was remembering he had three sisters now, Claudia took her hoop earrings off and gave them to Rachel, and then continued down the hall.
Ashley was talking to Cassidy Jackson, and Angela Watts. Lindsay was nearby in the crowded hall, flirting with Bobby Wyatt, when all of a sudden they all heard the word: “BITCH.”
And Ashley turned around.
Ashley opened up her mouth to say, “What’s going on- ” and got a fist in her face, and then Claudia was on her. A space in the hallway cleared as students made way for the battle.
“What’s going on,” Claudia said while beating Ashley’s ass, and pulling her hair, keeping her down every time the girl tried to get up, “is that you fucked my man. You trailor-trash-cheap-ass-cracker-jack-honkey-ho-stringy-haired-syphilis-ridden-drunkass-flea-infested-Payless-Shoe-Source-shopping-K-Mart-wearing-bad-skinned-caucasoid-eaten-out-dicksucking-trick-turning-sperm-wearing-come-containing-HIV-ridden-health-hazard-having-flat-assed-cow-tittied-fake-nail-wearing-dog-smelling-three-days-panty-wearing-wanna-fuck-the-whole-world-BITCH!”
She would have gone on, but this was when Mr. Halverson pulled her off of Ashley, who made a valiant attempt at defending herself, but was pulled back by Mick Rafferty. George Stearne was standing among the aureole of spectators, and he admitted he’d been a little hesitant to break up the fight. Ashley could stand to have her ass kicked. And apparently, she’d finally messed with a man who had someone who had something to say about it.
The circle was breaking up. Kevin Foster coming through, too late, saw his daughter the worse for wear. Mr. Halverson told Claudia, “You’ll have to come to the principal’s office. You too, Ashley.”
The two of them sat on opposite ends of the principal’s office. Roy and Rachel came in to deposit Claudia’s earrings. And then a little while later, Madeleine came in with the rings. Then Mr. Jankowski, the principal came in, and said, “I hope you girls can find something to say to each other. Ashley. How ‘bout you first?”
Ashley, who certainly looked like shit, sighed in her chair, and kept the bag of ice over her eye, “I guess what I have to say is... sorry for... what I did.”
Claudia continued to look disgusted.
“Claudia, you say something, now,” Mr. Jankowski told her.
Claudia sighed and then said, “I guess what I have to say is...
“I’m sorry…”
“That’s good, Claudia—”
“That you’re such a BITCH!”
And then she hopped across the room onto Ashley, and set to beating the crap out of her again.
THE HALLS OF JAMNIA HIGH School were quiet that early afternoon as Mick Rafferty came down the hall. Luke and Tina rounded the corner from the lobby, and Mick could tell they’d been smoking.
“I know you guys have a study hall,” he told them.
They looked at each other and grinned, giddily. Tina had turned Luke giddy in the last year, and then they headed down the hall, each in turn murmuring, “Yes, Mr. Rafferty.”
“And Tina?”
She turned around, tossing her red-brown hair.
“Break a leg tonight.”
“Oh, I hope not sir,” she said. And both she and Luke laughed, heading down the empty hall.
Mick, on his way to the gymnasium, realized that Stearne still hadn’t told Luke the truth yet. And then the principal’s office door came open, and Ashley stepped out. A bruise was forming around her left eye, and she looked up at him, squinting through it.
“I bet this makes you laugh,” she told him.
And it had up until she said that. Then he shook his head, and said, “No, Ashley. I’m sorry... About everything.”
“You are sorry,” she told him. “About everything.”
And then she headed down the hall in the opposite direction. She turned around, and said, “Next time why don’t you try helping a student that you can’t- ” she mouthed the word fuck. And then turned around, and went down the hall.
Mick sighed before going up to his classroom.
Jamnia High School was built on a slight incline so that the first floor was actually a mezzanine, and the second floor came out onto Michael Street as well. Ashley was heading out of this quieter section when she bumped into Derrick Todd coming in, and he picked up the jacket Ashley had dropped, pushing his curly hair out of his face.
“I’m sorry,” she said sullenly.
“You’re a real speed demon today, aren’t you! Where are you going?”
“Home,” Ashley said.
“Aw, Ash, everyone gets into scrapes,” he said.
“I don’t want to be here,” she told him. Then, “I suppose we’re off for tonight.”
Derrick looked genuinely confused by this, and said, “Why?”
“Because,” Ashley pointed to her black eye. Her slightly busted lip.
“Does it hurt that bad?”
“No, Derrick,” she said losing patience. “Because I look this bad.”
“No you don’t,” he told her. “You look great. You could have two black eyes, and look better than Lindsay any day.”
Ashley stifled a grin.
“And I was with her for months,” Derrick went on. “If you’re really concerned, then maybe you should go home. Put some ice on that shiner. I’ll be there around eight, alright? We don’t have to go out. I’ll just… take care of you. Bring you tea or something.”
He smiled at her, anxiously, “Alright?”
Ashley grinned and nodded her head, “Alright, Derrick.”
That night Aileen had her hands full getting Ross, Ryan, and herself to look decent without worrying about Ashley and Ashley’s worries about her black eye.
“You look fine,” Aileen told her daughter who was sitting at her vanity.
“But, Mama, my eye.”
“No one can tell. Not even in this light. You didn’t get messed up that badly.”
Aileen stopped, held a finger up, and crossed her bedroom, checking herself out in the mirror, and knowing she needed to change into her dress. She came back with a pair of shades.
“How is that?” Aileen said, trying them on first. “Am I chic?”
Ashley chuckled, and said, “Yes, Mama. Very.”
“Well then you be chic too, and let me get dressed.”
Aileen gave her daughter the glasses. “I honestly don’t know what the big deal is,” she said. “It’s just Derrick Todd.”
“He is a big deal, Mama,” Ashley said. “He’s a really nice boy.”
“Exactly,” Aileen said.
“It’s a big deal for me to be with a nice boy for once.”
And then Aileen understood.
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
WHEN THE BOYS CAME HOME after school, it was Vaughan who saw it first, and picked up on what it was. Cedric was in the yard, picking up bits and pieces so Vaughan knew his father had just seen it himself.
“What the- ?” Ian started, and Mackenzie placed a hand on his shoulder.
The gate to the Fitzgerald house was open, and on the green grass was a CD player, a portable television, blankets, piles of clothes on hangers, pillows, and a few completely useless things like toy trucks and, as Ian saw coming into the yard, clothes too small to wear.
“What’s going on?” Roy murmured to Mackenzie, his new brother.
Ian readjusted his backpack, and began picking up things, not saying a word. They were all his. He came up the stairs with the CD player and the portable TV stacked on top of it. Behind him he felt the steps of Mackenzie, Vaughan and his cousin. He dropped off his things in the spare room as Mackenzie was entering with a pile of clothes, and then he went out into the hall, and down to the kitchen.
“Your father came,” Cedric said, pulling a cigarette out from the pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen table, and taking one for himself, then passing one to Ian. He always knew the right thing to do.
“He dropped all of this off?” Ian said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. Cedric passed him the lighter. He knew that Ian needed to be tough at this moment.
“I gotta go over there,” Ian said, lighting the cigarette as his friends came into the kitchen.
“We got the rest of the stuff,” Roy told his cousin.
“Please don’t go over there,” Cedric said.
Ian exhaled, and shouted, “He threw me out!”
“That’s right,” Cedric said, never losing his calm. “A not so subtle message. But you can be subtler. Don’t go over there starting something, alright?”
“Ian, can I talk to you?” Mackenzie said, and took the other boy back into their room.
“What, Kenzie?” Ian’s words were quick and clipped, which meant he wanted to cry, and Mackenzie wanted to hold him, but he suspected Ian wanted to cry alone. They were too alike here.
“Cedric’s right,” Mackenzie said. “You don’t need to go over there starting something. You weren’t living there anyway.”
“It’s my house!” his voice broke now.
“This is your house!” Mackenzie said, jabbing the mattress he sat on. “This is your house. Where you’re safe, where you’ve been living. Don’t be stupid, E.”
“You think my old man might kill me,” Ian said. “But I’m the one who’s got the gun.”
“I think someone might kill someone,” Mackenzie said. “And I wouldn’t put it past you to pull the trigger. I really wouldn’t. So I’m begging you to stay right here. Don’t go over there without one of us. Don’t go over there at all.”
“Kenzie- ”
“If you love me,” Mackenzie said.
Ian’s chest rose up. Then it fell. He cracked a smile. “You’re playing dirty now.”
“I don’t care. You owe this to me. You owe it to Cedric. Chill out, alright?”
When Ian didn’t say anything, Mackenzie repeated, “Alright?”
Ian sighed, “Fuck!” he said, “Alright, already.”
Race’s feet were in pain from the bulk of an eight hour shift across the street at Hasty Tasty when she walked into Windmill Cereal Plant.
Aileen was coming close to quitting time, and dreading going to class tonight.
“Race?” she said, a little surprised.
“Roy just came by,” Race told Aileen. And then she told Aileen everything that Roy had told her.
“I don’t believe it,” Aileen muttered.
“Well, I do,” said Race.
When Race Cane got home she called up her brother, and told him that he was the most worthlessmotherfuckingsonofabitch who ever walked the face of the earth... and then some.
When Aileen got home she called up the Fitzgeralds and told Mackenzie that Ian and Roy were coming to dinner that night.
“Mom, you’ve got class,” Mackenzie told her.
“Thanks, I always thought I could pass for Ginger Rogers.”
“I meant- ”
“I know what you meant, Mackenzie. I’ll take an absence. I don’t feel like going.”
“I don’t think you should skip,” Mackenzie told his mother, earnestly.
“I don’t think it’s your decision,” said Aileen. “Come on over as soon as possible.”
“Can Vaughan come over?”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course he can.”
Aileen hung up.
But as it turned out, Vaughan did not come. At least not immediately. He was trying to finish The Iliad because, as he explained, he had started it and even though he didn’t like it that well, he’d better end it. Tina was not home at all that night. Ashley was, and in a strangely fine mood. Ross hung around like a mean dog, and when he came into Ryan’s room, where the boys were talking, getting ready to go downstairs, Mackenzie felt sure something was about to happen. He looked at Roy and Ian. You just couldn’t judge what the Canes were going to do. When something happened to one it happened to the other, and they were both hotheaded and upset. It didn’t matter that Roy was, Mackenzie remembered, his brother. He was still a Cane, and there was trouble all over the room. Even Ryan’s ears, so like Kevin’s, pricked up when Ross entered.
“Mom wanted me to tell you to come down,” Ross said. “She’s almost finished cooking. She’s so pleased about everything. She’s feeling all this sympathy. Her fag son is home tonight. And her husband’s bastard on some towelhead came to visit too.”
“Ross, cool it,” Ryan said.
“The retard speaks,” Ross noted.
The boys got up to go to the kitchen, choosing to ignore Ross.
“Ross just says things like that to make himself feel better,” Mackenzie told them as if his younger brother weren’t there.
“Thanks, Doctor Fag,” Ross saluted his brother.
They all left the room quietly, and as Ian left he slammed Ross’s head into the lentil of the door quickly.
“I hate you,” he told him.
“Ian, stop,” Mackenzie said.
“Yeah, Ian, stop,” Ross mimicked, which was very unwise because Ian knocked him into the lentil again.
“I fucking hate you. I wish you would die,” Ian told him. His hand moved down to Ross’s throat.
“Hey stop!” Ross suddenly realized Ian was about business as the other boy shoved him into the lentil.
“Hey, why don’t you call me a towelhead and a fag? Go ahead. You want to. Call me a fucking Lebanese Faggot. Just do it. Make a few Syrian jokes. Go ahead. Say something about Pink Terrorists. Say something...” he slammed Ross’s head into the door. “...witty,” Ian finished with another thud that made a sickening sound.
“Hey, knock it off!” Ross cried.
“What’s going on up there!” Aileen shouted up the stairs.
Ian let Ross go.
“Nothing, Mom,” Mackenzie shouted down, weakly.
“Well then get down here and make drinks,” Aileen called. “And Ryan, set the table.”
Ian sighed, released Ross and sank off of the balls of his feet. To Mackenzie he sounded the way he did after coming. Except for Ryan the boys headed down the stairs, looking back at Ian every once in a while to make sure he didn’t go back to pound on Ross some more. Ian had scared them all, and was embarrassed at his behavior. But he’d wanted to hurt someone. And Ross had been conveniently present.
Ross was rubbing his throat and trying to swallow, attempting to disengage embarrassment from terror when Ashley’s door opened, and she said, “Ross?”
Ross turned around.
“I think,” she suggested, “it might be wise if you didn’t fuck with them anymore.”
Then Ashley smiled, and closed the door.
When the bill came, Rodder picked it up and read it off, then told everyone gathered round the table, his girlfriend, her cousin Claudia, Tina and Luke, “I think we should give her at least a two dollar tip.”
“Oh, don’t be so cheap, Rod!” Claudia said. “She put up with us, didn’t she?”
Claudia reached into her purse, pulling out a wallet. She was digging around in it while talking. “I can afford to be generous. Hakim decided to show me I was his girl by giving me his wallet tonight.”
Madeleine turned to Rodder.
“There are so many other ways,” he said, clearing his throat, “of telling a girl you love her.”
“Say it with diamonds,” Tina murmured.
“Five, six,” Claudia murmured, “and let me get some change and—What the hell is this?” Her voice changed as she stared into the wallet.
Luke looking clinically over Claudia’s shoulder said, “I believe it’s a condom.”
“Oh, shit,” Tina and Madeleine murmured together.
“Maybe it’s for you,” Rodder suggested feebly.
“Maybe I better talk to Hakim as soon as possible,” Claudia said.
That night over the phone, Drew Marsh told Mackenzie, “Ian’s got me scared.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“I never would have told him, but now I’m wondering. What happens when my parents find out?”
“I thought you said you were moving in with Simon.”
“I am,” Drew said. “But I don’t mean where will I live. I mean... what if they found out? If they knew what I was. Right now they love me. But what about when they find out?” Drew was whispering over the phone.
“Ian’s parents are different,” Mackenzie said.
“You’ve never met my parents,” Drew said.
“It’ll be alright,” Mackenzie told him, not believing himself because, of course, he didn’t know Drew’s parents. He knew his, and with them it certainly had not been alright.
Which Drew Marsh saw fit to point out.
“You left home, Kenzie. Everything fell apart.”
“And now everything’s coming back together. Look Drew, it’ll be alright.”
There was silence over the phone, and then Drew Marsh said, “Mackenzie, I’ve never been scared about this. Not in two years. Not until now.”
“Don’t be scared,” Mackenzie said quickly. “We’re your friends. A little far away… but we’re here. Always. I promise.”
“Ask Vaughan to pray for me,” Drew said.
“Hello,” Claudia said later that night in her bedroom in the house of Cedric’s sister on Price Street. “Is Hakim there? Yes. Thank you.” A few seconds passed. Claudia took in a few deep breaths to calm her self, and then tried to hum a Yolanda Adams song. To no avail.
Hakim greeted her, “What’s up, baby?”
“Hakim,” Claudia said. “You need to start talking. Right now!”
THAT FRIDAY MORNING THEY WERE all rehearsing the details of who was going where, and Madeleine was thinking of ways to get out of her coffee house gig so she could see Tina and Mackenzie’s play. Tina smelled something in the air. She had been just about to say, “Don’t you dare cancel your gig. The show runs for three nights—” when she stopped, and they turned around to see Claudia.
“Where’s your sister?” Claudia said to Tina.
“Which one?”
“The bitch.”
“Which one?” Tina repeated.
“The ho.”
“Oh, I think I saw her near Bone McArthur’s locker. Why?”
“I’m gon beat her ass,” Claudia said frankly. “Is that gon be a problem?” She was taking off her rings.
“I don’t think so,” Tina said.
Claudia dropped her rings off in Madeleine’s hands, and said, “I’ll be back.”
She put her book bag down and started walking down the hall where she almost bumped into Roy and Rachel.
“What’s up?” Rachel said.
Claudia told Roy, “I’m gon beat your sister’s ass.”
While Roy was remembering he had three sisters now, Claudia took her hoop earrings off and gave them to Rachel, and then continued down the hall.
Ashley was talking to Cassidy Jackson, and Angela Watts. Lindsay was nearby in the crowded hall, flirting with Bobby Wyatt, when all of a sudden they all heard the word: “BITCH.”
And Ashley turned around.
Ashley opened up her mouth to say, “What’s going on- ” and got a fist in her face, and then Claudia was on her. A space in the hallway cleared as students made way for the battle.
“What’s going on,” Claudia said while beating Ashley’s ass, and pulling her hair, keeping her down every time the girl tried to get up, “is that you fucked my man. You trailor-trash-cheap-ass-cracker-jack-honkey-ho-stringy-haired-syphilis-ridden-drunkass-flea-infested-Payless-Shoe-Source-shopping-K-Mart-wearing-bad-skinned-caucasoid-eaten-out-dicksucking-trick-turning-sperm-wearing-come-containing-HIV-ridden-health-hazard-having-flat-assed-cow-tittied-fake-nail-wearing-dog-smelling-three-days-panty-wearing-wanna-fuck-the-whole-world-BITCH!”
She would have gone on, but this was when Mr. Halverson pulled her off of Ashley, who made a valiant attempt at defending herself, but was pulled back by Mick Rafferty. George Stearne was standing among the aureole of spectators, and he admitted he’d been a little hesitant to break up the fight. Ashley could stand to have her ass kicked. And apparently, she’d finally messed with a man who had someone who had something to say about it.
The circle was breaking up. Kevin Foster coming through, too late, saw his daughter the worse for wear. Mr. Halverson told Claudia, “You’ll have to come to the principal’s office. You too, Ashley.”
The two of them sat on opposite ends of the principal’s office. Roy and Rachel came in to deposit Claudia’s earrings. And then a little while later, Madeleine came in with the rings. Then Mr. Jankowski, the principal came in, and said, “I hope you girls can find something to say to each other. Ashley. How ‘bout you first?”
Ashley, who certainly looked like shit, sighed in her chair, and kept the bag of ice over her eye, “I guess what I have to say is... sorry for... what I did.”
Claudia continued to look disgusted.
“Claudia, you say something, now,” Mr. Jankowski told her.
Claudia sighed and then said, “I guess what I have to say is...
“I’m sorry…”
“That’s good, Claudia—”
“That you’re such a BITCH!”
And then she hopped across the room onto Ashley, and set to beating the crap out of her again.
THE HALLS OF JAMNIA HIGH School were quiet that early afternoon as Mick Rafferty came down the hall. Luke and Tina rounded the corner from the lobby, and Mick could tell they’d been smoking.
“I know you guys have a study hall,” he told them.
They looked at each other and grinned, giddily. Tina had turned Luke giddy in the last year, and then they headed down the hall, each in turn murmuring, “Yes, Mr. Rafferty.”
“And Tina?”
She turned around, tossing her red-brown hair.
“Break a leg tonight.”
“Oh, I hope not sir,” she said. And both she and Luke laughed, heading down the empty hall.
Mick, on his way to the gymnasium, realized that Stearne still hadn’t told Luke the truth yet. And then the principal’s office door came open, and Ashley stepped out. A bruise was forming around her left eye, and she looked up at him, squinting through it.
“I bet this makes you laugh,” she told him.
And it had up until she said that. Then he shook his head, and said, “No, Ashley. I’m sorry... About everything.”
“You are sorry,” she told him. “About everything.”
And then she headed down the hall in the opposite direction. She turned around, and said, “Next time why don’t you try helping a student that you can’t- ” she mouthed the word fuck. And then turned around, and went down the hall.
Mick sighed before going up to his classroom.
Jamnia High School was built on a slight incline so that the first floor was actually a mezzanine, and the second floor came out onto Michael Street as well. Ashley was heading out of this quieter section when she bumped into Derrick Todd coming in, and he picked up the jacket Ashley had dropped, pushing his curly hair out of his face.
“I’m sorry,” she said sullenly.
“You’re a real speed demon today, aren’t you! Where are you going?”
“Home,” Ashley said.
“Aw, Ash, everyone gets into scrapes,” he said.
“I don’t want to be here,” she told him. Then, “I suppose we’re off for tonight.”
Derrick looked genuinely confused by this, and said, “Why?”
“Because,” Ashley pointed to her black eye. Her slightly busted lip.
“Does it hurt that bad?”
“No, Derrick,” she said losing patience. “Because I look this bad.”
“No you don’t,” he told her. “You look great. You could have two black eyes, and look better than Lindsay any day.”
Ashley stifled a grin.
“And I was with her for months,” Derrick went on. “If you’re really concerned, then maybe you should go home. Put some ice on that shiner. I’ll be there around eight, alright? We don’t have to go out. I’ll just… take care of you. Bring you tea or something.”
He smiled at her, anxiously, “Alright?”
Ashley grinned and nodded her head, “Alright, Derrick.”
That night Aileen had her hands full getting Ross, Ryan, and herself to look decent without worrying about Ashley and Ashley’s worries about her black eye.
“You look fine,” Aileen told her daughter who was sitting at her vanity.
“But, Mama, my eye.”
“No one can tell. Not even in this light. You didn’t get messed up that badly.”
Aileen stopped, held a finger up, and crossed her bedroom, checking herself out in the mirror, and knowing she needed to change into her dress. She came back with a pair of shades.
“How is that?” Aileen said, trying them on first. “Am I chic?”
Ashley chuckled, and said, “Yes, Mama. Very.”
“Well then you be chic too, and let me get dressed.”
Aileen gave her daughter the glasses. “I honestly don’t know what the big deal is,” she said. “It’s just Derrick Todd.”
“He is a big deal, Mama,” Ashley said. “He’s a really nice boy.”
“Exactly,” Aileen said.
“It’s a big deal for me to be with a nice boy for once.”
And then Aileen understood.
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Sorry this reply is so late, I mean to read and comment earlier but I got a bit busy. I know Ashley isn't making the best decisions but I am starting to like the thought of her and Derrick. Poor Ian! I feel so sad for him that his Dad threw him out. 
I hope that gun does not get used. Great writing and I eagerly await more tomorrow!
I hope that gun does not get used. Great writing and I eagerly await more tomorrow!ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, I completely got busy myself and this has been the first time I've been back to check for comments. There really is something lovely about the idea of a reformed Ashley and Derrick and Ashley at that. It is sad, in a way, that Sam Cane did would he did, but it would have been sadder if Ian had tried to stay and ended up like the kid Cedric told him about. Now I am clearly move on with his life, and sad as it is, that is a blessing.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, A BIG OLD DOUBLE HELPING OF JAMNIA! HERE IS PORTION ONE, PORTION TWO WILL BE SERVED UP LATER TONIGHT
Mick ran a hand through his hair. He was sitting on his couch in grey joggers, and a tee shirt. He was unshaven, and the television was too loud. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the show tonight. He’d been on the phone for two hours.
“Yes. What’s that?” he said straightening up, and turning the television down with his remote. “You do? Oh, God. I’ve been looking all evening. This kid dropped out you say? Great! Well, not for him. But for me. Can we... work out the details say… Monday? Yeah? Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Um hum. You too, buhbye.”
After Mick hung up the phone, he closed his eyes, grinned fiercely, and then began pumping the air with his fists, and jumping about the room shouting until there was a knock at the door. He answered it.
“Mrs. Robinette.”
“Is someone dying in here?”
“No ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Robinette.
“Has the Messiah returned?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am?”
“Have you learned you’re a woman in a man’s body?”
“No.”
“Then is this noise really necessary?”
Much chastened by the little old woman, Mick said, “No, Mrs. Robinette.”
I feel like I just got detention.
But he didn’t dwell on that. George wasn’t home, but he didn’t care about that either. He called over to his friend’s apartment. The answering machine was terse, and unfriendly, the way his friend sometimes pretended to be, and Mick told him, “When you get home, call me up. I have the greatest news, man. Luke Madeary will be going to Europe!”
IT TOOK A WHILE FOR Derrick to realize what was happening. They were parked on the side of Country Club Road. The Red Barn was black in the distance, and it was when Ashley put his hand in her blouse, and began unbuttoning it for him that he knew what was supposed to happen.
His body knew first, and it felt like a very long time before his body, and his mind, and something in between could hold conference with each other while Ashley was kissing him. Slowly, he pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” she murmured, sounding tired.
“We can’t do this,” Derrick said, feeling a little frightened of how close they had come to doing it.
“I brought protection,” she said.
“No. No, Ashley,” he was loud, because really he was talking to himself. “You, you don’t have to do that,” Derrick said. “I don’t charge for dates. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” Ashley said flatly.
“Yes,” Derrick said, a little defensively. “I am. And,” he sounded flustered, “I don’t want it to be this way. I want it to happen.... But not like this.”
Ashley sat up beside him. Derrick was more cute than he was handsome. When his face held this serious expression he actually looked sort of funny. But he wasn’t laughing, and she was a little embarrassed.
“Take me home, alright?” Ashley said.
“I pissed you off,” Derrick told her, putting his key in the ignition.
“No,” Ashley said. “I thought I pissed you off. That you probably wouldn’t want to see me now.”
“No,” he said, still talking to his steering wheel. Suddenly he turned to her with the eager expression she was accustomed to seeing on his face. “No, it’s just that... I think you’re better than that,” he told her. “I really do.”
He looked as if he were thinking really hard, and then he said, “You ever been to Columbus?”
“Where?”
“The capital of Ohio.”
“I know what it is?”
“Well, have you ever been?”
Ashley started to say, “Of course,” then realized, “No. We were supposed to go in eighth grade. I missed the trip. Measles.”
“Wanna go?”
“When?”
“Right now,” Derrick said.
“Ah...” and then she shrugged, and said, “Alright.”
“Great,” Derrick grinned at her. “We’re off.”
Tina was just getting into the house herself when the kitchen door opened, and Ashley came in laughing. A car honked its horn, and Ashley waved fondly before closing the door.
Mildly amused, Tina looked at her sister.
“How is Derrick?” Tina said.
Ashley walked up and threw her arms around Tina.
“Derrick is wonderful,” she exalted.
Tina looked at her sister sideways.
“You want to know what happened tonight?” Ashley said, eagerly. Tina could not remember the last time her sister had said anything eager to her.
“Sure,” said Tina.
“Nothing,” Ashley said. “Nothing at all.”
“You mean Derrick Todd is still a virgin?”
“Very much so,” Ashley reported. “Nothing at all happened except that we went to Columbus.”
“The capital?”
“Yup.”
“What’s in Columbus?” Tina demanded.
“Nothing,” Ashley told her sister. “Because we just left.”
Vaughan Fitzgerald realized that he was realizing something. It happens when something strange is happening and yet it seems completely natural to you, and then you remember it isn’t, that it’s never happened before.
For Vaughan it was sitting in his room after his father went to Mass, remembering that Ian had remarked that Drew was afraid, and asked him to pray. At times like this he said nothing when he prayed. He only felt a love that reached out beyond any sort of name or any words. It buoyed him up.
Literally.
Vaughan realized that he was approximately a foot off the bed. He was levitating.
“Um,” he murmured.
There was a knock at the door. Mackenzie called him.
“Enough of that, now,” Vaughan murmured, and came down to the mattress.
“Come in,” he told Mackenzie.
He decided that he would keep this to himself.
On the last Friday in April, when they were driving to the coffeehouse, Madeleine asked Rodder, “Did you get the letter from MSI?” and this was when he remembered what he’d done, and what he hadn’t.
“What, baby?” she said.
Rodder drove on.
“I’m not going to MSI,” he told her. The red light turned green.
Madeleine sat hunched in the car. In the back seat Luke and Tina said nothing.
“It didn’t seem like you liked it that much,” she told him. “Well, I support you, whatever you do. I’m sure you’ll find a school that will be glad to have you.”
“I already did.”
Even as Rodder said this, Michael Street ended splitting north, and south into Glendale Road, the gate of Belmont College right before them.
“Oh, honey, not Belmont,” said Madeleine.
“What’s wrong with Belmont?” Luke said as they turned north leaving the night darkened gate behind. Tina could see past the trees to the lights of the little dormitories.
Rodder said, “Nothing’s wrong with Belmont, but that’s not where I’m going. I can’t study psychotherapy there.”
“I didn’t even know you wanted to study psychotherapy,” Tina said dully.
“So you did find a place,” Madeleine said, happy for her baby.
“Um hum. University of Chicago.”
Madeleine gave this some consideration as they narrowly missed a red light and came down the Strip.
“I guess it’s closer than MSI, but what a major decision.”
“Oh, the School of Music is there,” Rodder said.
“Since when did you care about music?” Madeleine demanded. “I mean the music institute?”
They were approaching the club.
“Oh,” Rodder shrugged, and waited for another car to turn in, “Ever since my girlfriend got accepted into it.”
“What?” Madeleine said, puzzled.
“Oh, yeah,” Rodder went on. “She even got a scholarship. They say her portfolio and her practice tapes are excellent.”
As they came into the parking lot and parked, Madeleine said, “Alright, now Roderigo Luis Gonzales, what the hell are you talking about?”
He started laughing, and then turned to her, and kissed her on the head.
“You’re going to school, baby,” he said, effecting a Mexican accent, and kissing her again.
“I don’t- ” she started.
And so Rodder told her, and then she said, “But the tapes.”
“Remember I asked you to sing into a cassette for my Aunt Louisa?”
“But, I thought...” Madeleine was still at a loss.
“Baby, I hate my Aunt Louisa!” Rodder told her. “I would never ask you to make a tape for her.”
“I do believe,” Luke remarked, looking at the flabbergasted Madeleine Fitzgerald, “that you could knock her over with a feather.”
Derrick and Ashley swung by the coffee shop, which was the weirdest thing in the world to Tina. Ashley laughing, and carefree, and—for once—not swinging from a boy’s arm while tossing her hair over her shoulder. All of this time Tina realized that her sister had been acting. And maybe she was still acting with Derrick Todd, but she was acting differently this time around, and this time around the act looked a little more genuine. If, since her eighteenth birthday, Tina had not taken to writing herself an excuse note and skipping school every Friday, she might have known what her sister and Derrick behaved like in school.
As they were leaving, Derrick came up to congratulate Madeleine on school and Rodder too. Luke on Europe.
“And congratulations to you too,” he told Tina.
“Yeah, Tina,” Ashley said, sounding only a little wry. “Who knew?”
Tina looked at her sister, puzzled. Everyone had known she and Luke were going to Europe.
The Strip was crowded with high school kids, their tops down if they had convertibles, their windows open if they didn’t. The air was good and warm. Once Tina was surprised by seeing Ian zoom down the Strip in his battered black Continental shouting, along with her brother, “Congratulations, Martina!”
But it was when they came to a red light, and Bone McArthur’s red Mustang with Dice and Rick Shaker and his girlfriend in it, stopped beside them that she was finally confused out of her mind.
“So, Tina,” Dice said offhandedly, “Who knew? Congrats, cousin!”
“Yeah,” said Debbie Horris, beside Rick, “Congratulations Tina. You too, Madeleine. But we all suspected with you.”
And with that the light was green, and Bone’s Mustang gunned itself into the darkness.
When they came into Soovies with their fake IDs, and Mr. Rafferty, and Mr. Stearne looked up from their game of pool to both tell Tina, “Congratulations!” she said, slamming down her beer:
“Alright. That tears it! What the hell is going on?”
Stearne, holding his cue like Moses’s rod, legs spread apart, cocked his head and looked mildly amused.
“What?” Tina demanded.
“Oh, that’s right,” George Stearne said. “Well, I suppose this is what happens when you contract senioritis. You don’t know what’s going on in school.”
“She doesn’t know?” Mick Rafferty said surprised.
“Know what?” Tina demanded.
Madeleine started chuckling. They all did.
“Ms. Foster,” Stearne said, looking more pitiless than ever, “you’ve been elected to prom court.”
v i i i
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS SHIT!” Tina cried, sounding more disgusted than ever.
“This,” Stearne told her, passing her another beer, “is some shit you can definitely believe.”
When they all stared at the little man, he said, “I forgot. Teachers don’t curse.”
“Is it possible,” Luke wondered to his friends and teachers, “to make resolutions in the middle of the year?”
“I think it’s allowed,” Stearne said.
“I would like to resolve to stop making assumptions,” he said stolidly.
The next morning, while Tina was munching on a bagel at the breakfast table, her mother came down and said, “Congratulations, sleepy head.”
“Does everyone know?” Tina demanded.
“I think so,” her mother nodded.
“What are you so pleased about?” Tina had never seen Aileen Foster so giddy in her life. It could be said that the older woman was even taking milk and eggs out of the refrigerator in a giddy fashion.
“My daughter’s going to be the prom queen,” Aileen said.
“I’m just a prom princess right now,” Tina said, taking out her cigarettes. “Or a duchess or something.”
“But you will be queen,” her mother said, taking out bread. She must be about to make French toast.
“Mom, it’s me,” Tina pointed to herself. “Me. Not Ashley.”
Aileen looked straight at her daughter and said, “But, Martina, you’re her twin.”
This manner of foolishness went on all Saturday, and when Aileen was out and Tina brought it up, Kevin said, “It means a lot to your mom. Just let her have her fun.”
“She’s gonna dress me up and make me look like... like…”
“Someone pretty?” said Kevin.
“Dad, that’s not even fair.”
“Tina,” Kevin said, putting down his paper. “I know you’re dedicated to being the anti-Ashley. And anti... everything sometimes. But just this once it would mean so much to your mom if you were just pretty. She didn’t get to have all that fun in high school, and be a prom queen. And Aily could have been one. She could have been.”
Tina sighed, and played with the cross at the end of the rosary hanging around her neck.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” she said, hanging from the lentil of the little section under the stairs that Aileen used for an office.
“Thank you, Martina,” her father said, slipping his spectacles on and looking ridiculously respectable.
“And,” he added, “I’ll take Luke out and get him something nice.”
“What?” said Tina, ceasing her swinging.
“Luke,” said Kevin. “Luke Madeary. You are taking him to the prom? Or he’s taking you. Right?”
Tina was overcome with an urge to say something like, “I’m taking Stearne,” or “Actually, me and Madeleine are lesbians, and we’re going together.” But she only said, “I hadn’t really thought about it, Dad.”
“Well you’d better,” Kevin smiled at her brightly. “The prom queen can’t go stag.”
Mick ran a hand through his hair. He was sitting on his couch in grey joggers, and a tee shirt. He was unshaven, and the television was too loud. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the show tonight. He’d been on the phone for two hours.
“Yes. What’s that?” he said straightening up, and turning the television down with his remote. “You do? Oh, God. I’ve been looking all evening. This kid dropped out you say? Great! Well, not for him. But for me. Can we... work out the details say… Monday? Yeah? Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Um hum. You too, buhbye.”
After Mick hung up the phone, he closed his eyes, grinned fiercely, and then began pumping the air with his fists, and jumping about the room shouting until there was a knock at the door. He answered it.
“Mrs. Robinette.”
“Is someone dying in here?”
“No ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Robinette.
“Has the Messiah returned?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am?”
“Have you learned you’re a woman in a man’s body?”
“No.”
“Then is this noise really necessary?”
Much chastened by the little old woman, Mick said, “No, Mrs. Robinette.”
I feel like I just got detention.
But he didn’t dwell on that. George wasn’t home, but he didn’t care about that either. He called over to his friend’s apartment. The answering machine was terse, and unfriendly, the way his friend sometimes pretended to be, and Mick told him, “When you get home, call me up. I have the greatest news, man. Luke Madeary will be going to Europe!”
IT TOOK A WHILE FOR Derrick to realize what was happening. They were parked on the side of Country Club Road. The Red Barn was black in the distance, and it was when Ashley put his hand in her blouse, and began unbuttoning it for him that he knew what was supposed to happen.
His body knew first, and it felt like a very long time before his body, and his mind, and something in between could hold conference with each other while Ashley was kissing him. Slowly, he pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” she murmured, sounding tired.
“We can’t do this,” Derrick said, feeling a little frightened of how close they had come to doing it.
“I brought protection,” she said.
“No. No, Ashley,” he was loud, because really he was talking to himself. “You, you don’t have to do that,” Derrick said. “I don’t charge for dates. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” Ashley said flatly.
“Yes,” Derrick said, a little defensively. “I am. And,” he sounded flustered, “I don’t want it to be this way. I want it to happen.... But not like this.”
Ashley sat up beside him. Derrick was more cute than he was handsome. When his face held this serious expression he actually looked sort of funny. But he wasn’t laughing, and she was a little embarrassed.
“Take me home, alright?” Ashley said.
“I pissed you off,” Derrick told her, putting his key in the ignition.
“No,” Ashley said. “I thought I pissed you off. That you probably wouldn’t want to see me now.”
“No,” he said, still talking to his steering wheel. Suddenly he turned to her with the eager expression she was accustomed to seeing on his face. “No, it’s just that... I think you’re better than that,” he told her. “I really do.”
He looked as if he were thinking really hard, and then he said, “You ever been to Columbus?”
“Where?”
“The capital of Ohio.”
“I know what it is?”
“Well, have you ever been?”
Ashley started to say, “Of course,” then realized, “No. We were supposed to go in eighth grade. I missed the trip. Measles.”
“Wanna go?”
“When?”
“Right now,” Derrick said.
“Ah...” and then she shrugged, and said, “Alright.”
“Great,” Derrick grinned at her. “We’re off.”
Tina was just getting into the house herself when the kitchen door opened, and Ashley came in laughing. A car honked its horn, and Ashley waved fondly before closing the door.
Mildly amused, Tina looked at her sister.
“How is Derrick?” Tina said.
Ashley walked up and threw her arms around Tina.
“Derrick is wonderful,” she exalted.
Tina looked at her sister sideways.
“You want to know what happened tonight?” Ashley said, eagerly. Tina could not remember the last time her sister had said anything eager to her.
“Sure,” said Tina.
“Nothing,” Ashley said. “Nothing at all.”
“You mean Derrick Todd is still a virgin?”
“Very much so,” Ashley reported. “Nothing at all happened except that we went to Columbus.”
“The capital?”
“Yup.”
“What’s in Columbus?” Tina demanded.
“Nothing,” Ashley told her sister. “Because we just left.”
Vaughan Fitzgerald realized that he was realizing something. It happens when something strange is happening and yet it seems completely natural to you, and then you remember it isn’t, that it’s never happened before.
For Vaughan it was sitting in his room after his father went to Mass, remembering that Ian had remarked that Drew was afraid, and asked him to pray. At times like this he said nothing when he prayed. He only felt a love that reached out beyond any sort of name or any words. It buoyed him up.
Literally.
Vaughan realized that he was approximately a foot off the bed. He was levitating.
“Um,” he murmured.
There was a knock at the door. Mackenzie called him.
“Enough of that, now,” Vaughan murmured, and came down to the mattress.
“Come in,” he told Mackenzie.
He decided that he would keep this to himself.
On the last Friday in April, when they were driving to the coffeehouse, Madeleine asked Rodder, “Did you get the letter from MSI?” and this was when he remembered what he’d done, and what he hadn’t.
“What, baby?” she said.
Rodder drove on.
“I’m not going to MSI,” he told her. The red light turned green.
Madeleine sat hunched in the car. In the back seat Luke and Tina said nothing.
“It didn’t seem like you liked it that much,” she told him. “Well, I support you, whatever you do. I’m sure you’ll find a school that will be glad to have you.”
“I already did.”
Even as Rodder said this, Michael Street ended splitting north, and south into Glendale Road, the gate of Belmont College right before them.
“Oh, honey, not Belmont,” said Madeleine.
“What’s wrong with Belmont?” Luke said as they turned north leaving the night darkened gate behind. Tina could see past the trees to the lights of the little dormitories.
Rodder said, “Nothing’s wrong with Belmont, but that’s not where I’m going. I can’t study psychotherapy there.”
“I didn’t even know you wanted to study psychotherapy,” Tina said dully.
“So you did find a place,” Madeleine said, happy for her baby.
“Um hum. University of Chicago.”
Madeleine gave this some consideration as they narrowly missed a red light and came down the Strip.
“I guess it’s closer than MSI, but what a major decision.”
“Oh, the School of Music is there,” Rodder said.
“Since when did you care about music?” Madeleine demanded. “I mean the music institute?”
They were approaching the club.
“Oh,” Rodder shrugged, and waited for another car to turn in, “Ever since my girlfriend got accepted into it.”
“What?” Madeleine said, puzzled.
“Oh, yeah,” Rodder went on. “She even got a scholarship. They say her portfolio and her practice tapes are excellent.”
As they came into the parking lot and parked, Madeleine said, “Alright, now Roderigo Luis Gonzales, what the hell are you talking about?”
He started laughing, and then turned to her, and kissed her on the head.
“You’re going to school, baby,” he said, effecting a Mexican accent, and kissing her again.
“I don’t- ” she started.
And so Rodder told her, and then she said, “But the tapes.”
“Remember I asked you to sing into a cassette for my Aunt Louisa?”
“But, I thought...” Madeleine was still at a loss.
“Baby, I hate my Aunt Louisa!” Rodder told her. “I would never ask you to make a tape for her.”
“I do believe,” Luke remarked, looking at the flabbergasted Madeleine Fitzgerald, “that you could knock her over with a feather.”
Derrick and Ashley swung by the coffee shop, which was the weirdest thing in the world to Tina. Ashley laughing, and carefree, and—for once—not swinging from a boy’s arm while tossing her hair over her shoulder. All of this time Tina realized that her sister had been acting. And maybe she was still acting with Derrick Todd, but she was acting differently this time around, and this time around the act looked a little more genuine. If, since her eighteenth birthday, Tina had not taken to writing herself an excuse note and skipping school every Friday, she might have known what her sister and Derrick behaved like in school.
As they were leaving, Derrick came up to congratulate Madeleine on school and Rodder too. Luke on Europe.
“And congratulations to you too,” he told Tina.
“Yeah, Tina,” Ashley said, sounding only a little wry. “Who knew?”
Tina looked at her sister, puzzled. Everyone had known she and Luke were going to Europe.
The Strip was crowded with high school kids, their tops down if they had convertibles, their windows open if they didn’t. The air was good and warm. Once Tina was surprised by seeing Ian zoom down the Strip in his battered black Continental shouting, along with her brother, “Congratulations, Martina!”
But it was when they came to a red light, and Bone McArthur’s red Mustang with Dice and Rick Shaker and his girlfriend in it, stopped beside them that she was finally confused out of her mind.
“So, Tina,” Dice said offhandedly, “Who knew? Congrats, cousin!”
“Yeah,” said Debbie Horris, beside Rick, “Congratulations Tina. You too, Madeleine. But we all suspected with you.”
And with that the light was green, and Bone’s Mustang gunned itself into the darkness.
When they came into Soovies with their fake IDs, and Mr. Rafferty, and Mr. Stearne looked up from their game of pool to both tell Tina, “Congratulations!” she said, slamming down her beer:
“Alright. That tears it! What the hell is going on?”
Stearne, holding his cue like Moses’s rod, legs spread apart, cocked his head and looked mildly amused.
“What?” Tina demanded.
“Oh, that’s right,” George Stearne said. “Well, I suppose this is what happens when you contract senioritis. You don’t know what’s going on in school.”
“She doesn’t know?” Mick Rafferty said surprised.
“Know what?” Tina demanded.
Madeleine started chuckling. They all did.
“Ms. Foster,” Stearne said, looking more pitiless than ever, “you’ve been elected to prom court.”
v i i i
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS SHIT!” Tina cried, sounding more disgusted than ever.
“This,” Stearne told her, passing her another beer, “is some shit you can definitely believe.”
When they all stared at the little man, he said, “I forgot. Teachers don’t curse.”
“Is it possible,” Luke wondered to his friends and teachers, “to make resolutions in the middle of the year?”
“I think it’s allowed,” Stearne said.
“I would like to resolve to stop making assumptions,” he said stolidly.
The next morning, while Tina was munching on a bagel at the breakfast table, her mother came down and said, “Congratulations, sleepy head.”
“Does everyone know?” Tina demanded.
“I think so,” her mother nodded.
“What are you so pleased about?” Tina had never seen Aileen Foster so giddy in her life. It could be said that the older woman was even taking milk and eggs out of the refrigerator in a giddy fashion.
“My daughter’s going to be the prom queen,” Aileen said.
“I’m just a prom princess right now,” Tina said, taking out her cigarettes. “Or a duchess or something.”
“But you will be queen,” her mother said, taking out bread. She must be about to make French toast.
“Mom, it’s me,” Tina pointed to herself. “Me. Not Ashley.”
Aileen looked straight at her daughter and said, “But, Martina, you’re her twin.”
This manner of foolishness went on all Saturday, and when Aileen was out and Tina brought it up, Kevin said, “It means a lot to your mom. Just let her have her fun.”
“She’s gonna dress me up and make me look like... like…”
“Someone pretty?” said Kevin.
“Dad, that’s not even fair.”
“Tina,” Kevin said, putting down his paper. “I know you’re dedicated to being the anti-Ashley. And anti... everything sometimes. But just this once it would mean so much to your mom if you were just pretty. She didn’t get to have all that fun in high school, and be a prom queen. And Aily could have been one. She could have been.”
Tina sighed, and played with the cross at the end of the rosary hanging around her neck.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” she said, hanging from the lentil of the little section under the stairs that Aileen used for an office.
“Thank you, Martina,” her father said, slipping his spectacles on and looking ridiculously respectable.
“And,” he added, “I’ll take Luke out and get him something nice.”
“What?” said Tina, ceasing her swinging.
“Luke,” said Kevin. “Luke Madeary. You are taking him to the prom? Or he’s taking you. Right?”
Tina was overcome with an urge to say something like, “I’m taking Stearne,” or “Actually, me and Madeleine are lesbians, and we’re going together.” But she only said, “I hadn’t really thought about it, Dad.”
“Well you’d better,” Kevin smiled at her brightly. “The prom queen can’t go stag.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Portion one was very good! I am enjoying the lead up to prom. Ashley and Derrick are still very cute together. Great writing and I look forward to portion two soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I forgot how much fun this is. I also didn't know you'd get through part one so quickly. Poor Tina, or lucky Tina? And how nice is it to see Derrick and Ashley? Part two is coming soon.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
“I don’t get it,” Tina said to Madeleine when they were sitting in the BBC-arium. “It’s just prom. What’s the big deal? I don’t know what’s worse: being in the Midwest, or just being a teenager.”
Madeleine could not answer this. Vaughan said, “I think it’s because this is the closest thing Jamnia has to royalty.”
“Oh, you are going with me, right?” Tina said to Luke.
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” he said.
Madeleine murmured: “Who says romance is dead?”
Madeleine herself was not especially concerned about prom. She had been elected junior year to junior court. She hadn’t gotten the princess crown. This year she’d been passed over. It was quite all right. Madeleine was fixated on the revelation that in a matter of months she and her boyfriend would be off to Chicago living more or less together with newer, more exciting lives. She tried to tell herself there was no plotting out what would happen, that she should live in the present, but the more she tried this the more she failed. The more she could not resist making up scenarios of what would be going on in Chicago. Would she meet new and fabulous friends? She could not imagine meeting friends better than the ones she had now. Would she be discovered while playing at a coffee shop, quit school, produce her first CD by twenty, and be on MTV? She hated MTV, but if it was her personal publicity, well then that was different, wasn’t it? Madeleine Fitzgerald on the on TV with her first Grammy. Only Fitzgerald didn’t sound like a musical name. She might be Gonzales by them. And maybe she’d just stay small and folksy for a while, then break out about the same time that Rod was out of school and just coming to prominence. He’d be famous in scientific circles, and she would be famous in musical ones. In each one’s world, they’d just be the Mr. or the Mrs. At the Grammys she would come out in a long, slinky, black gown. It would be all covered in sequins, and she would blow everyone away. When she went up to get her little gramophone, Rod would come up with her and everyone would wonder about the beautiful couple, the Black songstress and her enigmatic, beautiful, Latin husband. Rumors of how he was a famous doctor would circulate.
But for now, there was the reality of passing the last classes of the year, or planning which days she would skip. And there was Claudia who could not get past prom, whose plans were bigger and bigger. For afterprom and after afterprom and a limo and how she and Tina and Rod and Luke and Hakim would all take a limo together.
And then there was Vaughan.
Vaughan had gotten quiet as he always did this time of year.
Vaughan was not the kind of kid who shouted about his birthday. He would appreciate it if you remembered. And in a way Madeleine knew that Vaughan had always felt ungracious about calling attention to the day of his birth, which was the day of his mother’s death. He would be sixteen the same week as prom, and Madeleine did not know what to get him.
ASHLEY FOSTER WAS GOING THROUGH her own little metamorphoses as well. Love, or perhaps the simple negative fact of not being lusted for, had made her happier and quieter. She actually looked at people now. Lindsay noticed this. It disconcerted her how her sister would look right at her when speaking, turning the full blue of her eyes on the other set of blue eyes. It was like having two Tinas in the house. And the more Aileen took to laying out pretty clothes for Tina to wear, and coaching her on walking and demeanor, the more difficult it became for Lindsay to distinguish one sister from the other.
Roy was over at the house a lot. He practically lived there, and he and Tina, and Kevin had discussed giving him the attic room or Ashley’s room after graduation, though it seemed uncertain if Ashley would leave home after high school. Belmont seemed like more of a certainty. The only time Ashley was ever mildly rude lately was when Ross would say something nasty to Roy, and then Ashley would slap him sharply on the back of the head, and go on about her business. So this was how Roy began to like Tina’s twin and think of her as his sister too.
A week before prom, Derrick looked up from the locker he was busy jamming books in, and saw Tina and Rodder, an odd pair.
“Hey guys, what’s up?”
Tina looked up at Rodder.
“Are you taking Ashley to the prom?” he blurted.
“What?” Derrick said.
“Derrick, she’s waiting for you to ask,” Tina said. “I’m actually starting to like her lately, and I’d hate to see her suffer any longer.”
“Whaddo you all mean?” Derrick said.
“Oh, Derrick she likes you!” Tina said, at last. “I don’t know how much, but enough to go with you to prom. She’d really like you to go but... She can’t ask you, can she?”
“You asked Luke, didn’t you?”
“It’s completely different,” Tina said.
“Look,” Rodder said, “if it’s not you it’s gonna be Bone. And I don’t think it’s gonna be Bone. I think he’s through with her. Tina’s got a point. She’s waiting patiently, and I think you’re the only guy that she’d be happy to go with.”
“Rod,” Derrick said, “I don’t know how to be delicate about this. But... weren’t you...?” He looked at Tina quickly. “Weren’t you with her?”
“Yes, and that may have not been the wisest thing I could have done for myself. But I didn’t think about how it might not have been the best thing for her either.”
Rod put his hands together for a second, then said, “As long as I’ve known Ashley, she’s always thrown herself under some guy, and every guy takes the bait. You’re the first person who gave her what she thought she didn’t want. Respect. I wish I’d done the same. You’re a good guy, and when I see her, Derrick, I remember that I wasn’t a good guy to her. And I think that maybe what I can do now- for both of you- is tell you to....”
“Get your head out of your ass, and ask her to prom!” Tina concluded.
“Exactly,” said Rod, giving Tina a strange look.
That afternoon Derrick gave Ashley a ride home from school. Tina, who was sitting in the kitchen with Madeleine, and waiting for Luke to get off of work, looked up at her sister.
“You’ll never guess what happened to me?” Ashley said.
“Not if you don’t tell me,” Tina agreed.
“Derrick Todd asked me to prom!”
Much to Tina and Madeleine’s credit, the former said, “I don’t believe it!” And the latter opened her mouth in shock.
Ashley smiled, beside herself.
Mackenzie and Ian stopped talking when Vaughan walked into the kitchen. He pretended not to notice. Ian put an affably stupid look on his face and said, “Hey, what’s up Vaughan?”
“I don’t know,” Vaughan said, sitting down and looking at the two of them cautiously. “What is up?”
“I was just saying, ‘What’s up?’”
“I know, Ian, you just said it.”
“I was just... making conversation.”
“Um hum,” Vaughan nodded. He looked at Mackenzie. Mackenzie only shook his head.
“His birthday is on Monday!” Ian said that night as he was sitting in the window smoking a cigarette, and Mackenzie was turned over on his face, trying to sleep.
“I know this,” Mackenzie pointed out. “I have known Vaughan Fitzgerald for nearly sixteen years, and for sixteen years May Twenty-Seventh has always been his birthday.”
Ian turned his head to the window, and the night air, and exhaled.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t known Vaughan for sixteen years, and you don’t have to be facetious. I just thought we should do something nice for our friend on his birthday.”
Mackenzie sat up in bed, and clicked on the floor lamp.
“The thing with Vaughan is you never know what to get him,” Mackenzie said. “The most frustrating thing about him is he’s the kind of best friend that no matter how well you know him you still... don’t know him.”
“We can ask Cedric,” Ian decided. “I bet Cedric’ll know. He always knows what to do.”
Cedric cocked his head at the boys and said, “Well, now that wouldn’t really be you getting a present would that? That would be me getting my son a present. And I already got him a present.”
Madeleine only said, “Vaughan’s not that complicated. Out of the little brothers I could have had I think I lucked out. The thing about him is he’s really pretty simple. And he’s not into video games or nice clothes or impressing people. He’s not really materialistic.”
“And this,” Tina said, “is why he is so difficult to shop for. And it’s the thing about him that pisses you off more than anything at Christmas and birthdays.”
“Amen,” Madeleine agreed.
It was Rachel who finally said, “Well has anyone bothered to ask him what he wants?”
Tina looked at Madeleine. Ian looked at Mackenzie. They all just looked dumbfounded. Roy began to laugh.
“You might want to ask him,” Rachel Du Fresne suggested.
“I GET TO PICK WHAT I WANT!” Vaughan cried, clapping his hands. Which was when Mackenzie and Ian both realized for the first time, that they were older than Vaughan.
“Vaughan, chill,” Ian said.
“I never get to choose,” Vaughan said.
“It’s cause you never say anything,” Mackenzie said.
“It’s cause no one ever asks except Dad. Every year I just close my eyes, unwrap presents, grin and bear it.”
“Whaddo you mean grin and bear it?” Mackenzie said. “I always get you nice stuff.”
“Yeah,” said Vaughan. “But it’s nice stuff for you. You always end up wearing it.”
“Oh,” Mackenzie said. Ian chuckled while Mackenzie went scarlet.
“I don’t mean to shop for myself,” he said. “It’s just... I try to get you nice things, and.… I do end up wearing the stuff I buy you, don’t I?”
Vaughan nodded.
“Gee, I’m sorry about that. Well, what do you want?”
“And it can’t be a million dollars,” Ian warned, “because that’s a little out of my range since my dad cut off my allowance.”
“I want to go see Drew and Simon,” Vaughan said simply. “After school’s out we should go up there. That’s what I want for my birthday. But you are absolved from getting me anything on the day of.”
“Well,” Mackenzie said, “even if my presents suck- ”
“I didn’t say they sucked.”
“Even if they’re not to your liking,” Mackenzie amended, “I like to get you a little something the day of. So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll do that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” said Vaughan.
VAUGHAN DID NOT GO to school on his birthday. Tina, who was in school because it was a Monday and not a Friday, was quick to note that since Mackenzie was never at home, he could have skipped too.
“It’s the principle,” he kept on saying.
Tina figured that this meant it was the principle that Cedric would let his children stay home on their birthdays, and Kevin and Aileen would not, but she wasn’t sure, so she just shrugged whenever her brother said this.
Whatever guiding principle led the Fosters, May the Twenty-Seventh was the day that Madeleine counted up all her carefully hoarded absences, and began using them. Rodder said he would not. Actually he said he could not.
“That’s what makes you a stick in the mud,” she told her boyfriend.
“That’s what makes me an all star athlete with a 4.0 GPA,” he retorted.
In Ian’s Continental she drove Vaughan up to Woodson for lunch. She took him around to the bookstore and then the lakeside strip of old brick buildings that made the downtown.
“You know I brought a ton of money with me?” she said.
“You did?” Vaughan looked surprised.
“Well, for me, for us, it’s a ton of money. What do you want? When you see something you like, point to it. That’s your birthday.” Madeleine never said birthday present. She said, “That’s your birthday. Or, that’s your Christmas. In a few weeks Vaughan would have to start looking for “her graduation.”
Vaughan pointed to a guitar.
“What are you gon do with a guitar?” his sister demanded.
“Play it,” Vaughan said.
Madeleine could not argue that, so she shrugged, and bought it.
They were home by four o’clock, and Mackenzie and Ian were back from school. Cedric was on a chair hanging streamers from the ceiling, and Roy was working the helium tank, filling balloons.
“Happy Birthday!” he said.
“What, no surprise party?” said Vaughan.
“Well, actually this party is for me and Mackenzie,” Ian said. “We ran off to Hawaii and got married while you were skipping school.”
Mackenzie blew on a cheap party favor, and shouted, “Surprise!”
Louise came over for a brief while with Claudia. She gave Vaughan an envelope which he later learned had a hundred dollars in it. This almost made him like the aunt his father could scarcely abide. Claudia gave him a silk shirt with African patterns, lines of blood red outlining geometric patterns of dull red the color of dried blood. Ian touched it and muttered, “Cool!” Long after Louise had left on some pretext of business, Claudia remained.
Rachel and her mother came over. Cousin Jane had also done the money in the card, card thing. In fact, when Vaughan counted the money out with Ian and Mackenzie later on, they wondered if the DuFresne’s couldn’t get him through college with that one gift on that one day. Most of his cousins didn’t stay, but when they came they came with envelopes.
Rachel got Vaughan a new edition of The Lord of the Rings. This was original thinking on her part, with a little help form Roy, and going around making sure no one had done it first.
Ian and Mackenzie pitched in and gave him a silver chain with a silver ring suspended from it and Cedric said it was appropriate, because he gave Vaughan his first ring with a ruby set in it.
“I know emeralds are for May,” Cedric told his son, “but the ruby went to your mother’s birthstone ring, and I thought you might want it.”
Vaughan slipped the gold ring on the middle finger of his right hand, a solemn reminder that this was the day his mother had died, and he said, “I do, Dad.”
Tina and Luke showed up right before dinner, and right before Rodder.
Tina gave Vaughan a carton of Lucky Strikes.
“Fun and practical,” she said,
And Luke gave him his free subscription to OT Direct.
“That way you never pay a tax on cigarettes again,” he explained, and then told Cedric, “You know they’re raising the prices again?”
Cedric nodded.
When Rodder told Vaughan that he’d won him a shopping spree at the Barnes and Noble on Willow Park Road, Vaughan looked amazed.
“What?” said Rodder.
“I didn’t think you’d get me a present or anything,” Vaughan said. “I mean... You didn’t have to.”
Rodder looked a little nonplused, and then he said, “Well, I guess not. But I did.” And he went on to tell how he was wondering what a good present was, and then he passed Barnes and Noble one day with Dice, and they saw a sign up that said if someone could guess how many marbles were in a bowl he’d get a free shopping spree in the bookstore. And Rodder figured he could do that.
“You are a man of many surprises,” Cedric noted, and Rodder looked duly pleased.
Ida said, “When in doubt give money!” And Ralph came over and told Vaughan, “This is a gift from me, and everyone at Holy Spirit.”
His godfather gave him an old leather bound, gold leafed edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, and an illustrated Bible along with an icon of Saint Clare.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when the house was finally emptied, and Ian and Mackenzie were explaining to Vaughan, “This is a friendship ring. See, and you can slip it on and off the chain.”
Ian added, “I got the chain, Mackenzie got the ring.”
“Ian didn’t want to make it sound girly or like I was proposing to your or something, so he said we should get the chain.”
That night, Ian and Mackenzie stayed with him, one on either side. Long after they’d fallen asleep Vaughan was awake and aquiver with the events of the day just passed. The moon in his window rose high and full until it shone on a shadow sitting in the window. The moonlight was just enough to see a woman sitting thoughtfully with her chin on her fist.
“Was it a good day?” she asked her son.
“Oh, yes, Mother,” Vaughan did not want to wake his friends, so he just thought his response. “It was very good.”
“It was good for me too,” Marilyn, who could afford to talk, said. “Even the first one was good for me. No one ever thinks it was. But it was.”
This was a shock to Vaughan as well.
Marilyn explained, “I did what I had to do. There’s a great satisfaction in that,” she said simply. “Now go to sleep.”
MY POCKET BOOK SAYS WE can go to LePetite,” Aileen told her daughter that Tuesday night as they walked through Willow Park Mall.
“Maybe so. But my hips say just the opposite,” Tina told her.
“Tina, you sell yourself too short,” her mother replied.
“No, Mother. I just have a fat ass. Otherwise I’m sexy as hell.”
“You do not have a fat ass. And you do not have to use a string of profanity.”
“Pardon my Spanish,” Tina said.
Aileen looked at her.
“Everyone always says, ‘Pardon my French.’ I thought it would be nice to say, ‘Pardon my Spanish,’ is all,” Tina explained.
Aileen shook her head, then said, “Look, there’s Lerners. Are your hips too big for Lerners?”
“I hope not,” said Tina.
She reminded herself to keep a civil tongue, and try to be a little less sarcastic. After all, Mom had gone to work, gone to classes, and gotten dressed to go to the mall and shop for her daughter’s prom dress. Everyone else would see a punky girl with a rosary around her neck, and hennaed hair traveling with a harried mother who looked to be about forty-five. No one knew how hard a day Aileen had put in, and that it made a woman approaching thirty-five seem a decade older. And no one knew that Tina was trying to be on her best behavior.
The Fitzgeralds were babysitting Old Coconut. Never in a million years did Lucas Patrick Madeary ever expect to be standing in S&K Men’s Warehouse with some old man’s hand between his legs testing the inseam, and Kevin Foster, his old chemistry teacher, beaming, pleased as punch.
“You look great,” the old man growled, pulling at Luke’s lapels. “You look dapper as hell,” he growled. It frightened Luke.
Kevin just went on nodding and smiling, looking a little stupid.
“Rent or buy?” the old man said.
“Buy,” Kevin said before Luke could open his mouth.
“Mr. Foster, I’m never gonna wear this again.”
“Every man needs a tuxedo,” Kevin insisted, more demonstrative than ever. Kevin himself was wearing a black tracksuit, and pulled his wallet and his credit card out of his back pocket.
“You don’t have to do this,” Luke sounded a little desperate.
Kevin made a noise like, “P‘Shaw,” and waved it off with his hand, smiling brightly.
What, Luke wondered, was the BFD about prom?
“BFD?” Aileen said to Tina.
Marcy Ryan, who was their salesclerk and went to Jamnia High School, looked at Tina, and then at Aileen before translating, “Big fucking deal.”
“Tina!” Aileen cried.
“I didn’t swear, Mother. I abbreviated. Marcy swore.”
Marcy, in black rimmed spectacles with chopsticks coming out of every which end of her hair, looked like she didn’t care she’d sworn, like she and Tina should be out smoking cigarettes together.
“Well it is a BFD,” Aileen told her daughter. “It’s a very BFD,” she said as she walked a circle around her, running a finger over the material of the gown. “This is beautiful,” she said.
It was a satiny blue strapless, and Marcy pointed out, “It really doesn’t go with her hair.”
“Which is just what I was about to say,” said Aileen.
“What?” Tina raised an eyebrow, sounding extremely wary.
“I was thinking,” Aileen continued, stopping and cocking her head to look at her daughter standing on the pedestal, “what about you having your natural hair color for prom?”
“But I’m blond,” Tina said through clenched teeth.
“It’s not a crime,” Aileen told her daughter.
“You know,” Kevin pointed out as they were leaving the Men’s Warehouse, and crossing the night darkened parking lot to the car, “that man did have a point.”
“The salesman?” Luke said dully.
“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “You would look nicer with a haircut. You think about that?”
The look Luke sent Kevin Foster said that not only had he not thought about it, but Kevin Foster should put the thought out of his own mind as well.
MORE TOMORROW AFTERNOON
Madeleine could not answer this. Vaughan said, “I think it’s because this is the closest thing Jamnia has to royalty.”
“Oh, you are going with me, right?” Tina said to Luke.
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” he said.
Madeleine murmured: “Who says romance is dead?”
Madeleine herself was not especially concerned about prom. She had been elected junior year to junior court. She hadn’t gotten the princess crown. This year she’d been passed over. It was quite all right. Madeleine was fixated on the revelation that in a matter of months she and her boyfriend would be off to Chicago living more or less together with newer, more exciting lives. She tried to tell herself there was no plotting out what would happen, that she should live in the present, but the more she tried this the more she failed. The more she could not resist making up scenarios of what would be going on in Chicago. Would she meet new and fabulous friends? She could not imagine meeting friends better than the ones she had now. Would she be discovered while playing at a coffee shop, quit school, produce her first CD by twenty, and be on MTV? She hated MTV, but if it was her personal publicity, well then that was different, wasn’t it? Madeleine Fitzgerald on the on TV with her first Grammy. Only Fitzgerald didn’t sound like a musical name. She might be Gonzales by them. And maybe she’d just stay small and folksy for a while, then break out about the same time that Rod was out of school and just coming to prominence. He’d be famous in scientific circles, and she would be famous in musical ones. In each one’s world, they’d just be the Mr. or the Mrs. At the Grammys she would come out in a long, slinky, black gown. It would be all covered in sequins, and she would blow everyone away. When she went up to get her little gramophone, Rod would come up with her and everyone would wonder about the beautiful couple, the Black songstress and her enigmatic, beautiful, Latin husband. Rumors of how he was a famous doctor would circulate.
But for now, there was the reality of passing the last classes of the year, or planning which days she would skip. And there was Claudia who could not get past prom, whose plans were bigger and bigger. For afterprom and after afterprom and a limo and how she and Tina and Rod and Luke and Hakim would all take a limo together.
And then there was Vaughan.
Vaughan had gotten quiet as he always did this time of year.
Vaughan was not the kind of kid who shouted about his birthday. He would appreciate it if you remembered. And in a way Madeleine knew that Vaughan had always felt ungracious about calling attention to the day of his birth, which was the day of his mother’s death. He would be sixteen the same week as prom, and Madeleine did not know what to get him.
ASHLEY FOSTER WAS GOING THROUGH her own little metamorphoses as well. Love, or perhaps the simple negative fact of not being lusted for, had made her happier and quieter. She actually looked at people now. Lindsay noticed this. It disconcerted her how her sister would look right at her when speaking, turning the full blue of her eyes on the other set of blue eyes. It was like having two Tinas in the house. And the more Aileen took to laying out pretty clothes for Tina to wear, and coaching her on walking and demeanor, the more difficult it became for Lindsay to distinguish one sister from the other.
Roy was over at the house a lot. He practically lived there, and he and Tina, and Kevin had discussed giving him the attic room or Ashley’s room after graduation, though it seemed uncertain if Ashley would leave home after high school. Belmont seemed like more of a certainty. The only time Ashley was ever mildly rude lately was when Ross would say something nasty to Roy, and then Ashley would slap him sharply on the back of the head, and go on about her business. So this was how Roy began to like Tina’s twin and think of her as his sister too.
A week before prom, Derrick looked up from the locker he was busy jamming books in, and saw Tina and Rodder, an odd pair.
“Hey guys, what’s up?”
Tina looked up at Rodder.
“Are you taking Ashley to the prom?” he blurted.
“What?” Derrick said.
“Derrick, she’s waiting for you to ask,” Tina said. “I’m actually starting to like her lately, and I’d hate to see her suffer any longer.”
“Whaddo you all mean?” Derrick said.
“Oh, Derrick she likes you!” Tina said, at last. “I don’t know how much, but enough to go with you to prom. She’d really like you to go but... She can’t ask you, can she?”
“You asked Luke, didn’t you?”
“It’s completely different,” Tina said.
“Look,” Rodder said, “if it’s not you it’s gonna be Bone. And I don’t think it’s gonna be Bone. I think he’s through with her. Tina’s got a point. She’s waiting patiently, and I think you’re the only guy that she’d be happy to go with.”
“Rod,” Derrick said, “I don’t know how to be delicate about this. But... weren’t you...?” He looked at Tina quickly. “Weren’t you with her?”
“Yes, and that may have not been the wisest thing I could have done for myself. But I didn’t think about how it might not have been the best thing for her either.”
Rod put his hands together for a second, then said, “As long as I’ve known Ashley, she’s always thrown herself under some guy, and every guy takes the bait. You’re the first person who gave her what she thought she didn’t want. Respect. I wish I’d done the same. You’re a good guy, and when I see her, Derrick, I remember that I wasn’t a good guy to her. And I think that maybe what I can do now- for both of you- is tell you to....”
“Get your head out of your ass, and ask her to prom!” Tina concluded.
“Exactly,” said Rod, giving Tina a strange look.
That afternoon Derrick gave Ashley a ride home from school. Tina, who was sitting in the kitchen with Madeleine, and waiting for Luke to get off of work, looked up at her sister.
“You’ll never guess what happened to me?” Ashley said.
“Not if you don’t tell me,” Tina agreed.
“Derrick Todd asked me to prom!”
Much to Tina and Madeleine’s credit, the former said, “I don’t believe it!” And the latter opened her mouth in shock.
Ashley smiled, beside herself.
Mackenzie and Ian stopped talking when Vaughan walked into the kitchen. He pretended not to notice. Ian put an affably stupid look on his face and said, “Hey, what’s up Vaughan?”
“I don’t know,” Vaughan said, sitting down and looking at the two of them cautiously. “What is up?”
“I was just saying, ‘What’s up?’”
“I know, Ian, you just said it.”
“I was just... making conversation.”
“Um hum,” Vaughan nodded. He looked at Mackenzie. Mackenzie only shook his head.
“His birthday is on Monday!” Ian said that night as he was sitting in the window smoking a cigarette, and Mackenzie was turned over on his face, trying to sleep.
“I know this,” Mackenzie pointed out. “I have known Vaughan Fitzgerald for nearly sixteen years, and for sixteen years May Twenty-Seventh has always been his birthday.”
Ian turned his head to the window, and the night air, and exhaled.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t known Vaughan for sixteen years, and you don’t have to be facetious. I just thought we should do something nice for our friend on his birthday.”
Mackenzie sat up in bed, and clicked on the floor lamp.
“The thing with Vaughan is you never know what to get him,” Mackenzie said. “The most frustrating thing about him is he’s the kind of best friend that no matter how well you know him you still... don’t know him.”
“We can ask Cedric,” Ian decided. “I bet Cedric’ll know. He always knows what to do.”
Cedric cocked his head at the boys and said, “Well, now that wouldn’t really be you getting a present would that? That would be me getting my son a present. And I already got him a present.”
Madeleine only said, “Vaughan’s not that complicated. Out of the little brothers I could have had I think I lucked out. The thing about him is he’s really pretty simple. And he’s not into video games or nice clothes or impressing people. He’s not really materialistic.”
“And this,” Tina said, “is why he is so difficult to shop for. And it’s the thing about him that pisses you off more than anything at Christmas and birthdays.”
“Amen,” Madeleine agreed.
It was Rachel who finally said, “Well has anyone bothered to ask him what he wants?”
Tina looked at Madeleine. Ian looked at Mackenzie. They all just looked dumbfounded. Roy began to laugh.
“You might want to ask him,” Rachel Du Fresne suggested.
“I GET TO PICK WHAT I WANT!” Vaughan cried, clapping his hands. Which was when Mackenzie and Ian both realized for the first time, that they were older than Vaughan.
“Vaughan, chill,” Ian said.
“I never get to choose,” Vaughan said.
“It’s cause you never say anything,” Mackenzie said.
“It’s cause no one ever asks except Dad. Every year I just close my eyes, unwrap presents, grin and bear it.”
“Whaddo you mean grin and bear it?” Mackenzie said. “I always get you nice stuff.”
“Yeah,” said Vaughan. “But it’s nice stuff for you. You always end up wearing it.”
“Oh,” Mackenzie said. Ian chuckled while Mackenzie went scarlet.
“I don’t mean to shop for myself,” he said. “It’s just... I try to get you nice things, and.… I do end up wearing the stuff I buy you, don’t I?”
Vaughan nodded.
“Gee, I’m sorry about that. Well, what do you want?”
“And it can’t be a million dollars,” Ian warned, “because that’s a little out of my range since my dad cut off my allowance.”
“I want to go see Drew and Simon,” Vaughan said simply. “After school’s out we should go up there. That’s what I want for my birthday. But you are absolved from getting me anything on the day of.”
“Well,” Mackenzie said, “even if my presents suck- ”
“I didn’t say they sucked.”
“Even if they’re not to your liking,” Mackenzie amended, “I like to get you a little something the day of. So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll do that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” said Vaughan.
VAUGHAN DID NOT GO to school on his birthday. Tina, who was in school because it was a Monday and not a Friday, was quick to note that since Mackenzie was never at home, he could have skipped too.
“It’s the principle,” he kept on saying.
Tina figured that this meant it was the principle that Cedric would let his children stay home on their birthdays, and Kevin and Aileen would not, but she wasn’t sure, so she just shrugged whenever her brother said this.
Whatever guiding principle led the Fosters, May the Twenty-Seventh was the day that Madeleine counted up all her carefully hoarded absences, and began using them. Rodder said he would not. Actually he said he could not.
“That’s what makes you a stick in the mud,” she told her boyfriend.
“That’s what makes me an all star athlete with a 4.0 GPA,” he retorted.
In Ian’s Continental she drove Vaughan up to Woodson for lunch. She took him around to the bookstore and then the lakeside strip of old brick buildings that made the downtown.
“You know I brought a ton of money with me?” she said.
“You did?” Vaughan looked surprised.
“Well, for me, for us, it’s a ton of money. What do you want? When you see something you like, point to it. That’s your birthday.” Madeleine never said birthday present. She said, “That’s your birthday. Or, that’s your Christmas. In a few weeks Vaughan would have to start looking for “her graduation.”
Vaughan pointed to a guitar.
“What are you gon do with a guitar?” his sister demanded.
“Play it,” Vaughan said.
Madeleine could not argue that, so she shrugged, and bought it.
They were home by four o’clock, and Mackenzie and Ian were back from school. Cedric was on a chair hanging streamers from the ceiling, and Roy was working the helium tank, filling balloons.
“Happy Birthday!” he said.
“What, no surprise party?” said Vaughan.
“Well, actually this party is for me and Mackenzie,” Ian said. “We ran off to Hawaii and got married while you were skipping school.”
Mackenzie blew on a cheap party favor, and shouted, “Surprise!”
Louise came over for a brief while with Claudia. She gave Vaughan an envelope which he later learned had a hundred dollars in it. This almost made him like the aunt his father could scarcely abide. Claudia gave him a silk shirt with African patterns, lines of blood red outlining geometric patterns of dull red the color of dried blood. Ian touched it and muttered, “Cool!” Long after Louise had left on some pretext of business, Claudia remained.
Rachel and her mother came over. Cousin Jane had also done the money in the card, card thing. In fact, when Vaughan counted the money out with Ian and Mackenzie later on, they wondered if the DuFresne’s couldn’t get him through college with that one gift on that one day. Most of his cousins didn’t stay, but when they came they came with envelopes.
Rachel got Vaughan a new edition of The Lord of the Rings. This was original thinking on her part, with a little help form Roy, and going around making sure no one had done it first.
Ian and Mackenzie pitched in and gave him a silver chain with a silver ring suspended from it and Cedric said it was appropriate, because he gave Vaughan his first ring with a ruby set in it.
“I know emeralds are for May,” Cedric told his son, “but the ruby went to your mother’s birthstone ring, and I thought you might want it.”
Vaughan slipped the gold ring on the middle finger of his right hand, a solemn reminder that this was the day his mother had died, and he said, “I do, Dad.”
Tina and Luke showed up right before dinner, and right before Rodder.
Tina gave Vaughan a carton of Lucky Strikes.
“Fun and practical,” she said,
And Luke gave him his free subscription to OT Direct.
“That way you never pay a tax on cigarettes again,” he explained, and then told Cedric, “You know they’re raising the prices again?”
Cedric nodded.
When Rodder told Vaughan that he’d won him a shopping spree at the Barnes and Noble on Willow Park Road, Vaughan looked amazed.
“What?” said Rodder.
“I didn’t think you’d get me a present or anything,” Vaughan said. “I mean... You didn’t have to.”
Rodder looked a little nonplused, and then he said, “Well, I guess not. But I did.” And he went on to tell how he was wondering what a good present was, and then he passed Barnes and Noble one day with Dice, and they saw a sign up that said if someone could guess how many marbles were in a bowl he’d get a free shopping spree in the bookstore. And Rodder figured he could do that.
“You are a man of many surprises,” Cedric noted, and Rodder looked duly pleased.
Ida said, “When in doubt give money!” And Ralph came over and told Vaughan, “This is a gift from me, and everyone at Holy Spirit.”
His godfather gave him an old leather bound, gold leafed edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, and an illustrated Bible along with an icon of Saint Clare.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when the house was finally emptied, and Ian and Mackenzie were explaining to Vaughan, “This is a friendship ring. See, and you can slip it on and off the chain.”
Ian added, “I got the chain, Mackenzie got the ring.”
“Ian didn’t want to make it sound girly or like I was proposing to your or something, so he said we should get the chain.”
That night, Ian and Mackenzie stayed with him, one on either side. Long after they’d fallen asleep Vaughan was awake and aquiver with the events of the day just passed. The moon in his window rose high and full until it shone on a shadow sitting in the window. The moonlight was just enough to see a woman sitting thoughtfully with her chin on her fist.
“Was it a good day?” she asked her son.
“Oh, yes, Mother,” Vaughan did not want to wake his friends, so he just thought his response. “It was very good.”
“It was good for me too,” Marilyn, who could afford to talk, said. “Even the first one was good for me. No one ever thinks it was. But it was.”
This was a shock to Vaughan as well.
Marilyn explained, “I did what I had to do. There’s a great satisfaction in that,” she said simply. “Now go to sleep.”
MY POCKET BOOK SAYS WE can go to LePetite,” Aileen told her daughter that Tuesday night as they walked through Willow Park Mall.
“Maybe so. But my hips say just the opposite,” Tina told her.
“Tina, you sell yourself too short,” her mother replied.
“No, Mother. I just have a fat ass. Otherwise I’m sexy as hell.”
“You do not have a fat ass. And you do not have to use a string of profanity.”
“Pardon my Spanish,” Tina said.
Aileen looked at her.
“Everyone always says, ‘Pardon my French.’ I thought it would be nice to say, ‘Pardon my Spanish,’ is all,” Tina explained.
Aileen shook her head, then said, “Look, there’s Lerners. Are your hips too big for Lerners?”
“I hope not,” said Tina.
She reminded herself to keep a civil tongue, and try to be a little less sarcastic. After all, Mom had gone to work, gone to classes, and gotten dressed to go to the mall and shop for her daughter’s prom dress. Everyone else would see a punky girl with a rosary around her neck, and hennaed hair traveling with a harried mother who looked to be about forty-five. No one knew how hard a day Aileen had put in, and that it made a woman approaching thirty-five seem a decade older. And no one knew that Tina was trying to be on her best behavior.
The Fitzgeralds were babysitting Old Coconut. Never in a million years did Lucas Patrick Madeary ever expect to be standing in S&K Men’s Warehouse with some old man’s hand between his legs testing the inseam, and Kevin Foster, his old chemistry teacher, beaming, pleased as punch.
“You look great,” the old man growled, pulling at Luke’s lapels. “You look dapper as hell,” he growled. It frightened Luke.
Kevin just went on nodding and smiling, looking a little stupid.
“Rent or buy?” the old man said.
“Buy,” Kevin said before Luke could open his mouth.
“Mr. Foster, I’m never gonna wear this again.”
“Every man needs a tuxedo,” Kevin insisted, more demonstrative than ever. Kevin himself was wearing a black tracksuit, and pulled his wallet and his credit card out of his back pocket.
“You don’t have to do this,” Luke sounded a little desperate.
Kevin made a noise like, “P‘Shaw,” and waved it off with his hand, smiling brightly.
What, Luke wondered, was the BFD about prom?
“BFD?” Aileen said to Tina.
Marcy Ryan, who was their salesclerk and went to Jamnia High School, looked at Tina, and then at Aileen before translating, “Big fucking deal.”
“Tina!” Aileen cried.
“I didn’t swear, Mother. I abbreviated. Marcy swore.”
Marcy, in black rimmed spectacles with chopsticks coming out of every which end of her hair, looked like she didn’t care she’d sworn, like she and Tina should be out smoking cigarettes together.
“Well it is a BFD,” Aileen told her daughter. “It’s a very BFD,” she said as she walked a circle around her, running a finger over the material of the gown. “This is beautiful,” she said.
It was a satiny blue strapless, and Marcy pointed out, “It really doesn’t go with her hair.”
“Which is just what I was about to say,” said Aileen.
“What?” Tina raised an eyebrow, sounding extremely wary.
“I was thinking,” Aileen continued, stopping and cocking her head to look at her daughter standing on the pedestal, “what about you having your natural hair color for prom?”
“But I’m blond,” Tina said through clenched teeth.
“It’s not a crime,” Aileen told her daughter.
“You know,” Kevin pointed out as they were leaving the Men’s Warehouse, and crossing the night darkened parking lot to the car, “that man did have a point.”
“The salesman?” Luke said dully.
“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “You would look nicer with a haircut. You think about that?”
The look Luke sent Kevin Foster said that not only had he not thought about it, but Kevin Foster should put the thought out of his own mind as well.
MORE TOMORROW AFTERNOON
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am liking where this story is going and it sounds like it is going to be a good prom! I am glad Vaughan got some nice presents for his birthday. Ashley seems to be growing as a character and I am glad Derrick is taking her to the prom. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! Have a great Friday and weekend!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Thank you much. Yes, Ashley is growing and everyone seems more or less happy for once.Everything is winding to a happy conclusion. At the beginning of the story you had your favorite characters. I'd be curious who your five favorites are now?
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Mackenzie, Vaughan, Ian, Luke and this may be controversial given her past actions but I am really starting to like Ashley as a character.
