The Hidden Lives of Virgins

[CharmedFan28]

I was raised catholic and remained one until I realised just how much the higher ups in the church hate gay people. I still believe in God to an extent but I am no longer a catholic.

 

[ChrisGibson]

The thing is, as much as I sympathize, I think belief and a lack of belief deserve better answers. We say we believe in churches and organizations and when those organizations fail we stop believing, but the truth is the belief is as good as the believer. My Catholicism is grown up now. Its not true that as you grow older you grow wiser, but it is true that if you allow yourself to become complicated, the things in you will have depth, and of course, the Catholic Church was never in Rome or in a Vatican anymore than Judaism is in Jerusalem. My religion was in me. I have had to conclude that while my religion is many things, it is Catholic of a sort. It is not Roman. It has gone wild and been cross pollinated with Hinduism, witchcraft and sodomy, blowjobs and communism, goddess worship and feminism. It is full of heresies. I did not leave the Church because it didn’t like gay people or because I learned anything new about it. I left because I learned new things about me and what my Catholicism had become, and what it had become was something too untrusting of priests, too curious about the word and too skeptical of the stories Catholics told about themselves, too wild and weird to be happy sitting in a church pew. But then, you only have to read what I have written in all of these stories to pretty much know how I feel.

 

[CharmedFan28]

You're right, I guess I don't really think about faith too much so that was why my answer was so brief. I also stopped going to church because of a lack of trust in priests after all of the abuse came to light. I guess I don't really have a good answer about my faith waning and the catholic church. Maybe I will have a better answer in the future but I am pretty tired at the moment so I don't sorry.

 

[ChrisGibson]

We can't all be high on caffeine at four in the morning thinking about religion, so.... being tired is allowed.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT, WE REHASH A LITTLE FROM THE LAST PART, MADELEINE HAS A SLEEP OVER, CEDRIC MEDITATES ON HOW FAR YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN AND THE USES OF BISCUIT MIX WHILE LINDSAY GOES A STEP TOO FAR AND GETS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HER SIBLINGS



MADELEINE CLIMBED OUT OF THE window and down the trellis, the only way her father had never been able to catch her escaping, and went through the high over growth of the side yard to the garage, into the musty smelling place which was filled with summer heat in late autumn, and mildew scented cold in summer. She pulled out her bike, which she scarcely used anymore. Before she’d thought about getting a car and started using Tina’s, this bicycle had been the freedom to go wherever she wanted. Now she realized that she had never gone far. Jamnia was the extent of her imagination, and she thought she had a better than average imagination. No wonder no one here ever went anywhere.
Madeleine’s path was not down Michael Street. It described a loose circle around the set back cul de sac areas of split levels behind the school, and close to the Lake. She cut up Fairlane Drive, well out of the range of the high school, or her own house before she was anywhere close to traveling toward her intended destination. Several blocks east of her house, she crossed Michael. It was almost empty at this time of night. She rode through the quiet tree lined streets of Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets. Some houses were bricks and colonials, some long blocks of small shoeboxes with one large picture window. A few boasted two stories, garages, antique antennas.
Main Street was still fairly busy at this time of night. Some bars were still open. The Walgreens was open down the block. Two blocks down to her left, Madeleine could see the shadow of Our Lady of Jamnia. There were some kids out, probably from the college, looking for a good time. She crossed Main and all was quiet again. She made a right turn into small houses set back in trees where she could hear crickets. Over some hill a motorcycle was revving up. A train was sighing as it crossed the trestle a block or so away.
Madeleine parked her bike in the bushes before a little house that was set back at an angle. White, two storied, with a little porch, blue shutters and blue trim. Her heart felt light tonight.
When she passed through the gate and the overhang of tree limbs, Madeleine Fitzgerald saw Rodder Gonzales was sitting on his porch, sipping a beer. He toasted her with it, smiled, and then raised a finger and went inside the darkened house. He came back with one for her.
“I thought you’d never come,” he said.
“I told you I would.”
With the edge of his tee shirt, Rodder unscrewed the cap and handed the beer to Madeleine. It was good and fizzy going down her throat. She decided not to smoke. He had always hated that.
“And the parents away for the weekend of the last game,” Madeleine commented.
“What can I say?” Rodder said. “I’m hurt.”
He didn’t seem terribly hurt.
“Don’t worry. Madeleine’ll make it all better. Just let her know where it hurts.”
“I’m not sure if you’re concerned about my welfare, Maddy,” Rodder said in a hurt voice. “I think you just want to take advantage of me.” He kissed her. “What’s a boy to do? I bet when you heard my parents wouldn’t be home to protect me...”
Since they’d first met, Rodder had always turned her on by feigning innocence in the middle of passion. Over six feet, lean, and very handsome with shocking sky grey eyes and a mind sharp as a whip, Roderigo Gonzales, when they were alone would channel a naive boy, helpless and stupid, wondering what was about to happen to him. When he murmured, “What’s a boy to do?” in that same heated tone, she imagined a serial rapist would use to say, “I’m about to fuck you,” it made her panties flood.
She was on his lap, tied up in his arms. They were making out, really making out, lips on throats, mouth to mouth, kissing eyes and noses, caressing arms, squeezing thighs, tasting flesh. She looked around a second. There had been no traffic or anything.
“You can’t see anything from here,” Madeleine marveled. Undistracted, Rodder kept kissing her.
“I couldn’t see this porch until I’d come past the gate,” she said.
“I know,” Rodder murmured, not caring as he set himself on his back, under the porch swing. Madeleine was on top of him. He guided her hands to the belt of his shorts.
“We can’t- ” she gasped.
He pulled her face down and kissed her. His eyes, black in the night, were full on her.
“Yes we can,” he insisted, and began working with her jeans.
“Oh, my God, Rod,” she murmured. She felt the melting. She was going wet and wide in that secret place. Before Rod there had been no one. After him there had never been this melting, the aching inside her, the feel that his hands on her skin, working off her clothes, were actually melting into her skin. There was that old familiar ache in her.
They undressed each other on the porch. Sex with other people was not sex like this. They didn’t even undress all the way. So much of the lovemaking would occur in the touching and the tasting of the body once this was done.
Madeleine got on her side so they lay facing each other, and then he moved over her panting and eager. She pulled down Rodder’s shorts, and his white briefs. She watched him growing. His cock was a black, thick shadow in the night darkness. She only saw it a little as she guided him in. He gasped a little at making his entry. Rodder took Madeleine’s hands gently, and guided them under his tee shirt. Together they lay like that making no loud sounds, no sudden moves, clinging and rolling in and out, trying to fuse their bodies together until slowly Rodder began to develop a rhythm, and sing a little to his rhythm, and Madeleine began to caress his back, broad and damp with perspiration, wet and narrow at the small. She began to caress his ass, round and covered in smooth hairs, his beautiful thighs, this beautiful body she was opening to, felt like she was giving birth to.
Before Rodder began to speed up and make her cry out, before those last moments when the loving became fucking, before it became coming she wondered what had happened to break this unity?



“He’s not white if that’s what bothers you,” Madeleine had told her father.
Cedric just sat on the couch and looked up at his daughter after her first date with Rodder.
“His name is Roderigo Luis Gonzales.”
“Okay,” Cedric said.
“And if he was white... What’s the difference?”
Over a decade of single fatherhood had taught Cedric a variety of silences from which to choose. He picked one now.
“Well, I like him,” Madeleine said.
“That’s good,” Cedric had told his daughter.
“He’s really smart,” Madeleine added, heading up the stairs. “Gonna be a marine biologist.”
“That’s great.”
“You didn’t even give him a chance,” she stopped at the top of the stair.
“Madeleine, I didn’t give him anything. I didn’t even get to see the man. He came and left.”
“Well, I want him over for dinner.”
“Alright,” Cedric flipped a page in the magazine. “I’ll cook my famous biscuit pot pie.”
“Oh, Daddy, please! No more biscuit dinners!”
“It’s the only thing I know how to make!” Cedric said. “And they’re all purpose. Biscuit pot pie, biscuit croissants, biscuit bisque and biscuit elephant ears. A whole meal in a fucking can. Cost about sixty-five cents plus condiments.”
Two years into the relationship, Rod came to the house and told Cedric, “I love your daughter. Absolutely. Truly.”
Rodder’s grey eyes had been uncompromising, and that’s when Cedric realized that up until then, even with Kevin and Aileen, he had never believed in teenage love. Marilyn had come along late, the children later. Suddenly Cedric knew that Rod was serious, and he knew in that brief moment that Rod was having sex with Madeleine. He had already told himself it didn’t matter, but suddenly he wanted to cry. He turned off the valve, and turning his head away from the boy, nodded and said, “I know you do.”
After they left, Cedric had paced the house playing with his fingers, and then playing the piano. Vaughan came down to ask what was wrong. Cedric did not answer. He couldn’t tell Vaughan the truth, and Vaughan had never been a child you could lie to.
Rodder knew that the one statement had told Cedric too much. He knew that Cedric knew and stood wary of the house for a while. Even when he had finally come back as a regular, he knew that Cedric knew. Cedric’s demeanor was different. The older man coping with some knowledge he didn’t know how to handle.
Rod wondered how Madeleine never guessed or how, if she had guessed, she thought her father didn’t care?

Rod, himself, had a hard time being with Madeleine after the night he told without telling, because he thought about Mr. Fitzgerald’s face. Cedric was so good at his poker face and yet this once it had given way.
He wished he could know more. Or say more. But saying more would only ruin more. He wished he could say that he did love her that it wouldn’t have happened without love, that it wasn’t even intended. They’d driven out of town, to the barn that rose over the lake. But this was just to make out, just to make out and have a nice drive. And then... well maybe they had meant it to happen. It was hard to say. They had gone out into the field, like in a movie or a novel. It wasn’t in a park or in the back seat. Her hair had smelled so nice, and been thick and black whipping against his face. They’d sat in the field a distance from his car, hidden from sight by the grasses. They lay on their backs looking at the stars.
They kissed slowly, then more intensely. At the usual point where the fooling around ended, he had asked without asking, and she had consented. He always liked to think how it had happened under the stars. They had undressed and been completely naked without a sound anywhere near them. He had been slow, wanting her to feel as good as possible as he came in for the first time. He remembered growing inside of her, and then the slow movement. Don’t move too fast, don’t think it’s all about you. Listen to her, ask her what she wants, comfort her over and over again, lean over and kiss her. Love her.
It wasn’t like the novels, but then it wasn’t like the bad experiences that happen so often. There was no weeping when it was over. They just held each other tight and didn’t say anything.
Like tonight before the last fame of the season, tonight in his house.
Tonight in his bed.

vi.

When Luke Madeary came to consciousness, he was grubby and fully dressed, his mouth tasting of stale beer, his head throbbing. He was violently startled to find himself in bed with Kirk Berghen and his girlfriend, Money. Both were naked and looked as if they’d passed out in the midst of coitus, her legs impossibly high about Kirk’s waist, Kirk Berghen’s mouth still wide open.
Luke stumbled out of the room and into the yard, wondering what had happened to Tina or to the night. Out here the air was fresh, the grasses yellow green. But it was all too sharp. The day was not particularly bright. But it was still too bright. Luke stood still. The world spun a little under his feet. He didn’t know where he was.
“You looking for Martina?”
He looked up to see a bronze haired woman. She wore glasses, and had a serious face, but a kind one.
He nodded.
“This is my house,” she said by way of introduction.
This was Kirk’s aunt. Kirk was Tina’s cousin. This was Tina’s grandmother.
“She’s upstairs in her mom’s old room,” Ida said. “Come on in.”
Luke followed. He managed to say “Thank you.”
“No one else is up yet,” Ida said. “It’s early still.”
The kitchen was filled with sunlight, Ida knew instinctively to shut the blinds for Luke. He loved the sound of the black coffee splashing into a cup, loved to smell the rich, slightly burning aroma. In the distance, the morning train blew its whistle as it crossed the tracks near his home.
“Eat this.” Ida put down a day old danish with the coffee, the creamer and sugar.
Luke fumbled with the sugar and creamer to make a good cup off coffee. This and one bite of danish had him a little more alert.
“Are you and Tina seeing each other?” Ida said baldly.
“I don’t know, Ma’am,” Luke pushed his hair out of his face.
“That’s a shame. You’re a good enough looking young man,” Ida said. “If I were forty years younger... But....” she shrugged.
“You’re still good looking,” Luke told her valiantly.
“I know,” Ida said with a smile, “and I could probably show you a thing or too, but then I’d spoil you for my granddaughter.”

WHEN MARTINA FOSTER STEPPED ACROSS the threshold that morning, she could tell something had happened. She smelled fresh coffee in the kitchen, and her father was humming and smiling, and he kissed her on the head on his way out to the high school. Aileen was singing along with the radio. Tina noted that her mother had actually pulled a brush through her hair before nine in the morning on a Saturday, and she looked like she really was only thirty-four.
“Good morning, Martina,” Aileen said brightly.
Tina eyed her mother suspiciously, and moved to the plastic Bundt cake pan, cutting a piece of week old strawberry pound cake.
“Morning, Mother. I trust that you had a good evening.”
Aileen, smiling, eyes down on the batter she was stirring said, her voice barely above the radio, “Oh, yes.”
Tina poured a cup of black coffee, broke off some of the light cake, and dunked it.
“I hope you and Dad didn’t wake up the whole house.”
“Tina!” Aileen said, coloring. But Tina noticed her mother was still smiling.
“Grandma says hi,” Tina said, by way of offering an explanation as to where she’d been last night.
Aileen smiled and nodded, singing absently,

“And did you ever wonder why?
Did it ever make you cryyy?
Cause you’re my favorite mistake.”

Suddenly Lindsay bounced down the stairs, looking like the oldest instead of the youngest woman in the room.
“It’s you!” she said, pointing a finger at Tina.
Tina looked behind herself for someone else, and then said, “I sure in the hell hope it is.”
“I want to talk to you.” Lindsay stuck out her finger.
Tina tried not to laugh.
“Please! When you do that, dressed in your band uniform, it reminds me of Uncle Sam.”
“I’m serious!” Lindsay cried.
“Lind,” Aileen frowned for the first time this morning. “What’s the fuss?”
“I need to talk to her,” Lindsay pointed at Tina, “woman to woman.”
Tina raised an eyebrow, and took a swig from her coffee.
“Alright, Sis. But make this quick.” She wiped her fingers off on her old trousers, and went to the living room with Lindsay.
“I want you to stay away from Derrick,” Lindsay hissed.
“What?” Tina wanted to laugh.
“I’m serious!”
Then Tina did laugh.
“The way you only say one word to him and he’s just- ‘Hi Tina.’ ‘Howya doin’, Tina!’ Tina this, Tina that. Tina! Tina! Tina! Well you stay away from him, Martina!”
“Fine.”
“I’m ser—”
“I know, you’re serious. And you’re seriously mental. No one wants Derrick Todd but you. For God’s sake, he has two first names.”
“Don’t make fun of him.”
“Fun. Fun. Fun,” Tina said just to be a bitch.
“And don’t be like Ashley, and try to steal him just to steal him.”
Tina’s head snapped to the side. Lindsay knew she’d gone too far.
“But Ashley would do something like that,” Lindsay said, defensively.
“Well then maybe you’d better stop wasting my time and go talk to Ashley. Or talk to Derrick if you think he’ll leave you.”
“He won’t leave me,” Lindsay insisted, throwing her hands on the wide hips of her trousers. “He can’t. I’m good to him. My God, I do things for him,” she hissed.
“Do things for him?” Tina raised an eyebrow. “Oh my God! Do you blow him?”
Tina was already whispering but Lindsay shushed her and said, “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, you give him handjobs,” Tina went on.
“This conversation is at an end,” Lindsay said, growing imperious.
“Well, shit,” Tina muttered. “If I’d known it would be that easy to shut you up...” And then she got up, and turned around, returning to the kitchen.
Aileen, who was in the middle of a soulful reinterpretation, of “Say a Little Prayer For You….!” stopped washing out the Tupperware bowls, and suddenly turned around to ask Tina, “So, who is this Luke?”
Tina sighed, took out her cigarettes, and said, “Firstly, I hate having sisters....”

After the half time show, Tina, Madeleine and Claudia came to sit down in the small section around the band area. The day was cool enough for them all to be in jackets. Some people actually had on gloves, but winter had not set in earnest. Last year at this time, they’d been on the football field, bundled under scarves and looking like nuts. George Stearne took enough time out from the direction of the band to say, “Ms. Foster, I certainly hope you’re studying for your part.”
“I’m studying right now,” she thumped her head. “Always Be Prepared, Stearne!”
Stearne smirked and said, “Does it ever occur to you to call me Mr. Stearne.”
“When I call you Stearne it’s like an adjective. Not a proper noun,” Tina explained. “Calling you Mr. Stearne would be like you calling me Miss Bitch.”
“Oh, my God,” Claudia said, as Madeleine caught her breath, and gagged on the Coke she’d been drinking.
Stearne only grinned from a corner of his mouth, and stroked his goatee.
“That is one way to think of it, Ms. Foster. Carry on,” he said, and left.
“Carry on,” Madeleine imitated in a British accent.
“Leave him alone,” Tina said, turning red.
“Tina’s got a cruuush,” Claudia said.
“So does Stearne,” Madeleine noted.
“He does not.”
“He left his lonely post as bandmaster to come and tease you,” Madeleine noted.
“He’s old,” Tina said.
“I think we’ve had this discussion before,” Madeleine said.
The game had not started, and Derrick Todd, who had been leaning over the band rail talking to Lindsay, kissed her, and then called out, “Hey Tina!” and waved at her.
For just a brief second, Tina saw the flash of anger in her little sister’s eyes, then she said, “I’m sorry Derrick, I’m forbidden to talk to you.”
Lindsay, too far away to get up and punch her sister, only scowled more as Derrick looked more confused, and then grinned and ran back to the field.
As the band started back up, Claudia said, “Now he is white, but have you noticed how with that sun blocker under his eyes and in a football uniform...”
“Even Derrick Todd looks buff,” Tina supplied. “Yeah. I noticed that. For the first time I was a little turned on.”
They heard Madeleine yelp and put her hand to her mouth as Rodder came running into sight.
“Doesn’t he look good?” Madeleine said.
“Um hum,” Tina said, non-commitally, never able to tell one football player from the other when he was wearing a helmet.

When the band had finished, and they were all standing around with their instruments looking scattered (though no real band dork would ever let his instrument actually be scattered) Lindsay found her brother and Ian Cane talking.
“Have you seen Tina?” Lindsay demanded.
“There are so many other things on my mind,” Mackenzie replied, startled to realize he sounded like a bitch.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“That’s exactly how you can take it.” Where was it coming from? This bitch voice? Is it part of the new GAY Mackenzie?
Lindsay humphed and stomped off, trumpet in hand.
“She’s pissed cause she thinks Tina’s trying to steal Derrick Todd,” Mackenzie told Ian who started to chuckle.
“Well that’s a shame,” Shawn Norman said from behind them, “cause someone needs to tell girlfriend that if she’s trying to compete, band uniforms just don’t flatter the figure.”
In the distance, Mackenzie and Ian could see Lindsay shouting and stomping her foot, and Tina between Madeleine and Claudia, smoking and looking amused.
“I’m starved as hell,” Ian said. “As soon as we put our instruments away we should go.”
“Should we pick up Roy first?” Mackenzie said. “Then we can just swing back here and get Vaughan. He said he’d be dressed by one... Which means two.”
Ian nodded.
“Cool.”

While Ian drove to the little white house on 1610 Allen Street, he told Mackenzie what Roy had said to him last night.
“At first I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, but then I thought you’d understand,” Ian said. “He’s like my brother. I guess he’s like how Vaughan is to you. You know? And so I watch out for him. And I kind of want him to know he’s not just tagging along. That he is wanted,” Ian said as they approached the little house.
Ian did not hit the horn, which surprised Mackenzie. He got out of the car and Mackenzie followed.
“I’ll give him shotgun,” Mackenzie said.
Ian smiled, “All that’s not necessary. Plus, you better give Vaughan shotgun since we both smoke, and it’ll bother you two.”
Race wasn’t home. As soon as Roy found his pea coat he was ready, and he looked to Mackenzie like one of the four children from Narnia going into the wardrobe. Mackenzie just kept murmuring, “Turkish Delight, please,” and Ian looked up at him, amused and confused.
“Ever read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe?” Mackenzie asked as they all climbed back into the car.
“No.”
Mackenzie said, “Then never mind.”
When they got to Vaughan’s house, he bitched for about five minutes about how long they had taken though the other three boys noted that he still wasn’t dressed, and then when Vaughan looked at Roy, he turned to Mackenzie and said in a British accent, “Turkish Delight, please?”
Ian shook his head.

They drove across the river for lunch. They found a Chinese restaurant in Canaan, and Vaughan said, “Maddy told me she and Rodder went here, and the food was great.”
Ian looked doubtful as he took his seat.
“Actually,” Vaughan amended, “she said it was authentic.”
“Well,” Mackenzie allowed, “it does look like a communist country in here.”
“I think it’s the cinder block walls,” Ian noted.
Roy said nothing, Vaughan said, “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”
Mackenzie beetled his brow and stuck out his lips.
“We’re here.”
The tea was bad, only to be outdone by the egg drop soup, the egg fu yung, and the fried rice.
“Oh my God,” Roy said, and because he spoke so infrequently, they all turned to the blue eyed boy.
“There’s a roach in my egg roll,” he commented.
At this, Vaughan stood up, and slowly left the restaurant. The other boys waited for him to return, and then Mackenzie lifted a finger, and went out to the parking lot. Vaughan was sitting shotgun.
“Well, get the others,” he told Mackenzie.
Mackenzie obeyed. A minute later Ian was the only one standing outside of his car.
“We haven’t paid.”
“All the more reason to get in this car and drive like the wind before someone comes out and tells us that,” Vaughan said.
And so they did.
It was a block before anyone, Vaughan included, felt free enough to laugh. Vaughan lit a Lucky Strike, and passed it to Ian. They both shared it, and Ian laughed till his sides hurt.
“Where shall we go now?” he demanded.
“Fort Wayne?” Mackenzie suggested from the back.
“Excellent suggestion,” Ian said, taking a drag off the cigarette and passing it back to Vaughan.
“I was so not serious.”
“I know,” Ian said. “But I am.”
And he turned the car around to head for the highway.

It was as if they hadn’t stopped laughing all day when the boys came into the kitchen of the house on Logan Street. Kevin, happy at his victory, addressed them generally and jubilantly as, “Hey boys.”
“Where have you all been?” Aileen demanded, sitting at the kitchen table, one leg crossed over the other with a smoldering cigarette and a gin and tonic before her.
“Fort Wayne,” Mackenzie said, grinning stupidly.
“What the hell’s in…?” Aileen began, and then shook her head, and pulled her son closer to her, tousling his hair. “Mackenzie, sometimes I don’t get you. It’s the Vaughan rubbing off on you.”
She looked at the Black young man who only raised an eyebrow.
“How ‘bout you introduce us to your friends?”
But before Mackenzie could say anything, Kevin said, “Roy, how are you?”
“Good, sir—um—Mr. Foster.”
Kevin was about to say, “No need for that!” but then this other boy beside him, Race’s nephew, would want to call him Kevin too, and that would be too strange.
“Mr. Foster,” Ian nodded and stretched out his hand to shake Kevin’s manfully.
“This is Ian Cane,” Mackenzie said, checking his voice to make sure it didn’t rise or go stupid pronouncing the other boy’s name. “He’s in band with me.” Then he added, including Vaughan, “he’s our friend. And this is our other friend Roy... Whom Dad obviously knows.”
“Mr. Foster’s my gym teacher,” Roy clarified.
“Well, speak, Ryan,” Aileen prompted her son, and he said, “Hello.”
“Are you all staying for dinner?” Aileen said. “Or are you going over to Cedric’s to see what he’s doing with biscuits?”
“I’m biscuited out,” Vaughan confessed.
“You could stay here and eat,” Aileen told them. “And then you could clean up the kitchen and let me rest.”
They heard the door swing open, and Lindsay came up the little steps with Derrick in his Starter jacket.
“Great game, Derrick,” Kevin said.
“Yes it was, Coach Foster!” Around Kevin, Derrick’s eyes always bugged out, and he went hyper in his need to impress his coach and the father of the girl he was dating. Aileen inhaled the last of her cigarette, and grinned at the boy.
“Is it alright if Derrick stays for dinner?” Lindsay asked her father.
“If your mama says it’s alright. She’s the one cooking.”
Lindsay looked to her mother. Aileen took a sip of her gin and tonic. “If Derrick wants to learn how to scrub pans when he’s finished eating...”
“Sure, Mrs. Foster.”
Vaughan turned to Ian thinking Derrick seemed a little too eager to be trusted with a Brillo pad.
“Great,” she said and swilled back the last of her drink. “Tina should be home in a few minutes. She’s bringing Luke with her.”
Lindsay looked enraged. Vaughan looked to Mackenzie, amused, and Kevin grumbled, “Who’s Luke?”

“I’ve never had you in one of my classes, Luke.”
“I was in your chemistry class,” Luke reminded him.
“Um?”
“You partnered me with him once, Dad,” Tina reminded him.
Kevin looked confused over this, and to save the moment, Aileen said: “More potatoes, Luke?”
“No, Mrs. Foster.”
“What time did you leave the O’Muils?” Ian asked.
Luke gave him a look. Ian blenched.
“The O’Muils?” Kevin said, pasting a smile on his face.
“Yes,” Aileen said. “My family. What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing honey. Alright? Have some more meatloaf, Ian.”
“So why couldn’t you talk to me at the game today?”
“What?” said Lindsay.
“Tina,” said Derrick, clarifying, “I mean, why is it you said you weren’t allowed to talk to me.”
“Oh, my God,” muttered Aileen.
“I was just joking,” Tina said. “It was a great game. You were great, Derrick.”
“Tina!”
“What, Lindsay? He was great. Everyone was great. The team was great. Ian, Mackenzie, the band was great. Vaughan, you were great.”
“I was in my room.”
“You were still great.”
“Thank you.”
“Was Ashley great?” Mackenzie asked.
“No.”
“Where is Ashley?” Kevin said.
“Probably getting laid.”
“Tina!”
Tina shrugged. “Want another roll, Luke?”
“I’m good.”
“That’s good. Derrick, you know Ashley?”
“Not really well,” the boy replied. “She’s a good cheerleader. And she’s popular.”
“I’m popular,” Lindsay said, wounded.
“Yeah, but she’s really popular.”
“Ouch,” Aileen murmured, and turned to Kevin, who said nothing.
“Popular Ashley,” Tina murmured.
“Well you are too,” Derrick said to be kind.
“That- I most certainly am not. And I will never speak to you again if you continue to say such things,” Tina told Derrick.
“But Ashley’s that kind of popular,” Derrick went on, “where she can always find a guy. No matter where she is... There’s a guy.”
“They say the same thing about hookers,” Tina commented, and Aileen gagged on her food while Kevin stood up to slap his wife on the back.
“Breathe, Mom,” Tina commanded.
“Ashley’s a taker.” Lindsay said.
“That’s enough about your sister,” Kevin said, instructing Aileen, “Take a little water.”
“Yeah, Derrick, you’d better watch out,” said Tina, “a cute thing like you—”
“Martina,” Aileen tried to say in a low voice, but she was still having trouble breathing.
Derrick was blushing like an idiot.
“Mackenzie?” Vaughan said. “Ian? Where’s Roy?”
Tina looked around, then said, “Where’s Ryan?”

“SO I’VE READ TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, Sea Wolf and Treasure Island,” Ryan Foster was telling Roy. “Just because I was on a sea kick. I wanted to see how many books about water I could read. And I even made songs up about ‘em. But I won’t sing them cause they’re stupid. You just get lots of time on your hands to make up stupid stuff when you don’t have that many friends.”
Roy looked at Ryan from Ross’s side of the room, covered in football pennants. Ryan’s wall was filled with books, and held a globe and an astrolabe.
“You go to Catholic school?” Roy said.
Ryan nodded.
“I went to Tyler Elementary, then Jamnia Junior High. I always thought Catholic school would have been neat.”
“It sucks,” Ryan said.
“I didn’t have any friends at Tyler or Jamnia, so don’t feel bad,” Roy told him. Then he said, “Why don’t you have friends?” as if this made no sense to him.
“I have Tourettes. I say stupid stuff a lot. People get a little scared.”
“You haven’t said anything stupid around me.”
Ryan shrugged.
“Sometimes,” Roy said, “does it ever feel like nobody notices you and you just don’t fit in at all?”
Ryan looked suddenly very old, and he raised an eyebrow, and nodded.

MORE TOMORROW!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to be back reading this story! Lindsay is a bit of a piece of work. Hopefully she will lighten up towards Tina and her friends. It was nice to see more of the characters interacting with each other! Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed. But I can't let you go just yet. You have to give me three questions tonight!

 

[CharmedFan28]

How far into the story are we? Will Tina and Lindsay ever be more friendly? Apart from Tina are the names we have for characters so far that are nicknames?

 

[ChrisGibson]

Let's see. We are less than half way through the story. When we get to the end of chapter five we will have reached the halfway mark. There are ten long chapters in all. The second half of the book is very different and a lot of action picks up in it as well as a lot of past revelations. This is the longest stand alone story I have. Also in the second part there will be "reveals" that will surprise you. I think.

Lindsay... is pretty much going to be Lindsay. It gives nothing away to say she is pretty much who she's going to be for the rest of the story and we already know Tina takes no shit.

Nicknames: Well Roy's mother's name is Race which is short for her Lebanese name, Raceana. Ian's dad is Sam which is actually short for Samir. Rodder is of course short for Roderigo and Bone MacArthur's birth name.... I never asked him, but it's probably something like Eugene or Aloysius. Money Carroll is probably a nickname, but I never asked her what her real first name is. Ally is short for Alice and of course, Aily is short for Aileen. Mick Rafferty is Michael and George Stearne's nickname is Geo. Of course, Mackenzie is Kenzie. I think I covered it all, There will be lots of nicknames in the second half, but that's too big of a reveal for now. There is one major name swap, but that will be in the future. I never realized how many nicknames there are in this story.

 

[ChrisGibson]

v i i

Rodder Gonzales pointed out that Jamnia was probably as full of country roads and lakes and barns as it was actual city.
“It is sort of hard to tell where Lawrence County Limits ends and the city begins,” Madeleine agreed.
“Look at that sky,” Rodder said. It was an ice blue above the browning landscape. Madeleine lay back in her passenger seat and watched the sun turn the tree limbs golden.

“The saddest sight my eyes can see
is that big ball of orange sinking slyly down the trees
sitting in a broken circle
while you rest upon my knee
this perfect moment will soon be leaving me.

“You ever thought about serious music? You know, besides Showboat and Camelot?” Rodder asked her.
“No,” Madeleine said. Then, “Yes.” Then: “You mean outside of the choir of Our Lady of Jamnia?”
“Yeah,” Rodder looked at her as if she was stupid.
“No, I...” Madeleine stopped. They kept driving. Then she kept singing to the CD.

Suzanne calls from Boston,
the coffee’s hot,
the sun is high
and that same sun that warms your heart will suck the good earth dry
with everything its opposite enough to keep
you crying
or keep this whole world spinning with a twinkle in his eye

Rodder bammed down on the dashboard. They shouted:

Get out the map
Get out the map
and lay your finger anywhere down
we’ll leave the figuring to those we pass on the way out of town
Don’t drink the water
there seems to be something
ailing everyone

I’m gonna clear my head- : Madeleine.
I’m gonna drink that sun- : Rod.

I’m gonna love you good and strong,
while our love is good and young!

They couldn’t stop laughing, and Madeleine didn’t think they’d had this much fun together in a long time. No other boy had ever sung to the Indigo Girls with her- except for Vaughan.
“Yeah,” she said, at last. “I think about it. I think about being in music. I haven’t seriously been thinking about it for a while. I’ve been trying to be sensible. Think about school, you know.”
Rodder nodded, and then said, “Well, I’d help you out.”
“Would you be my back up?”
“God no!” Rodder laughed. “You’re the only person I’ll ever sing in front of. But... I’d be your support.”
They were on the state route, approaching Holy Spirit, the brick monastery on the hill to their rights. As they drove past, Lake Clare, silver blue today, winked into sight.
“If you’re serious, I’ll help you,” Rodder said again.
She looked at him.
“I’m serious,” he told her.
“Well then I guess I’m serious too,” Madeleine replied.

Ian was surprised when Roy called, though slightly disappointed and unable to determine why.
“Hey, Cuz?” he had been reading for social studies, and looked out of his window onto the barren rows of brown cornstalks. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to know,” Roy was sounding unusually peppy, “if you were going to visit Mackenzie or anything.”
“No, I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Well, he’s your friend, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you go to see him? And Vaughan?”
“Well... On weekends.”
“This is the weekend.”
“But we all just hung out yesterday. You just don’t keep on popping over to someone’s house if you don’t really know them that... I mean, if you all are just becoming friends.” Then Ian said, “Roy, what are you getting at?”
Roy gave a long, dramatic sigh, which was unlike him, and then said, “I just wanted to know if you were going to Mackenzie’s house. If you were, I wanted to go with you. It’s not like I can drive.”
“What are you going for?” And then: “You and Ryan hit it off!”
“He’s right,” Roy said. “No one does notice either one of us.”
Ian, who had spent most of his life not feeling noticed, said, “Look here, Roy. I’ve spent most of my life trying to notice you.”
“I know,” Roy said. Ian stopped the rest of his tirade. “And it’s good... How you look out for me and all. But yesterday I kinda got to look out for someone too.”
Ian, who had been idly thumbing rolling papers, pushed away the cedar box he kept his weed in, and pulled over a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Tell you what?” he said, at last, as he cashed the pack of cigarettes against the palm of his hand, “We’ll get up and go, right now. How’s that?”

About twenty minutes later, Ian rolled up to the white house on Allan Street, Roy was trying not to bounce on his toes and rock with excitement.
“What’s gotten into you?” Ian demanded, harmlessly. “You’re a real freak this afternoon.”
The sky was turning pewter grey as they threaded their way through town, past Jamnia High School, and stopped at the Fitzgerald’s. Ian told Roy, “Wait right here.” He wanted to say hi to Vaughan. Vaughan was just stepping out of the house in his green parka, and he said, “I just called you.”
“You did?”
“Don’t look so shocked, Ian. We’re friends.” Vaughan gave him an amused look. “I was going over to the Fosters.”
“So were we. I mean- Roy asked me to go.”
“He and Ryan hit if off?” Vaughan said. They were coming down the steps. “Yes, I noticed that.”
“You notice everything,” Ian said.
“I try.”
When they reached the house, Vaughan could hear his sister wailing from the living room.

What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
About meeeee?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
About meeeeee?

And Tina was slamming away on the guitar.
They stopped. Rodder rose up to cheer and informed the new arrivals, “Madeleine Fitzgerald can be heard at the stylish white Victorian on 1959 Michael Street every day but Sunday.” He passed an invisible mike toward her.
“My newest record is coming to a shower near you,” she said, smiling cheesily, and Tina trilled on the guitar.
“Where’d you learn to play that?” Ian asked her.
“I’m handy like that.”
“Teach me?”
“One day,” Tina shrugged, and then shouted up the stairs, “Kenzie!”
A few seconds later, it was Ashley who came down looking like a pissed off cat.
“Would you not scream, Tina!”
“As long as you’re here,” Tina said, nonplused, “when you’re going back up, tap on Kenzie’s door.”
Ashley, looking resentful, turned around and sauntered back upstairs. Tina shrugged. Before Roy could think of a tactful way to ask for him, it was Ryan who came bounding down the steps ahead of Mackenzie.
“Roy!” he said, unashamed to be excited.
When the two boys stood, together, Vaughan raised an eyebrow. They looked like a pair of mendicant elves. If he and Mackenzie were nothing alike, then these two were nothing different.
“Wanna see the rock garden?” Ryan asked, as if this were the most exciting thing in the world. Roy nodded, and the younger boy dragged him out.
“That’s why I came,” Ian said to Mackenzie. Then, “Well, it’s not the only reason I came. But Roy really wanted to see Ryan. I mean, not that I didn’t want to see you...”
Mackenzie just tilted his head, and smiled wistfully at Ian.

Outside, Ryan Foster began twitching, and jecking his head. It seemed like it lasted forever. When it was finished, Ryan did not want to look at Roy. Finally, he realized he had to, and the other boy regarded him calmly.
“It throws people off,” Ryan said.
“It’s not your fault,” Roy said casually.
“Does it freak you out?”
Roy shook his head. “Not really.”
Ryan did not say anything for a while. Then he said, “Tina says that we’re divided up into the three normal ones, and the three oddballs.”
Roy screwed up his face, and did some thinking. Then said, “Is Lindsay supposed to be the oddball?”
Ryan shook his head gravely. “It’s Kenzie.”
Roy seemed a little amazed. Mackenzie had never seemed very odd at all.

When Ian brought Roy home, Race Cane rose from her chair in front of the television. The whole house was bathed in the blue light of the boob tube, and the curtains were shut.
“I wish the two of you had called. I’ve been worried sick.”
“Sorry, Aunt Race,” Ian said, and she shut up immediately. She’d been ready for an argument, and was caught off guard at the realization there would be none.
“Yeah, Mom,” Roy said, disappointing her for a second time. “Sorry. We ate though.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To the Fosters.”
There was a long silence, and then Race said, sounding a little more cheerful than she ought to have, “Kevin and Aileen?”
“You know them?” Ian seemed surprised.
Race turned on the light. For the first time Ian saw his aunt’s face.
“Of course I know them. We’re the same age. There’s only one high school in town.” She turned to Roy. “How did Mr. Foster treat you?”
“He’s really nice.”
“Yes,” Race nodded. “And Aileen?”
Ian noticed Race did not call her Mrs. Foster.
“She’s really nice,” Roy said. “And pretty.”
“She’s held up well,” Race agreed, “after shooting out all those kids.”
Race seemed to be pondering something else for a moment, and then she said, “Well, go finish your homework. You need to get home, Ian. Your folks are worried.”
“They’re always worried.”
“I know.” Race smiled, at last. “Humor them.”
“Goo’night, E,” Roy said to his cousin, and went back to his room.
Ian was quiet. He finally lifted his eyes to his aunt, and said: “How do you know them?”
“The Fosters?” said Race. “I told you.”
Ian just continued to regard her steadily with his brown eyes.
“Oh, alright, already!” Race said. “I used to date Kevin in high school. Before Aileen snatched him away and got knocked up for her troubles. Is that all? Or will you continue with the third degree?”
“No, that’s all,” Ian said. “Goo’night, Aunt Race.”

“Look!” Madeleine called.
Rodder, on the couch before her, and Cedric, in his easy chair looked up.
Madeleine left the living room going out onto the front porch. She stood there for a while in her jeans and grey sweatshirt. Rodder came out in his white turtleneck and jeans, and wrapped his arms around her.
“The first snow,” she said, and pointed.
“I can’t see.”
Madeleine reached around and swatted Rodder on his buzzed head.
“That’s because you don’t have your contacts in. Make sure you put your glasses on when you drive home.”
“I hate my glasses.”
“I’d hate to know you drove off the side of the road and broke your neck because you couldn’t see.”
They were quiet like this for a long time. Madeleine watched the new snow fall gently to the sidewalk beyond the yard where it melted away almost immediately.
“If I tell you something,” Rodder began, “will you promise not to scream?”
Madeleine turned around and looked at him.
“It depends on what you’re about to tell me....”

MADELEINE SCREAMED AS SHE RAN into the house.
“Daddy!”
Vaughan came running down the steps at the sound of the scream.
“I’m gonna be at the Chopin!”
To both of their credits, neither Vaughan nor his father said, “What’s the Chopin?”
Rodder, who had been smiling broadly behind his girlfriend, looked from Vaughan to Cedric.
“The Chopin,” he explained, “is a theatre in Canaan. They have contests every two weeks. Winners get jobs performing regularly.”
“Does the Chopin have age limits?” Cedric said.
“You have to be twenty- one,” Madeleine said.
“And you figured, why let a little thing like being seventeen stop you?”
“I’m almost eighteen, Daddy,” Madeleine reprimanded. “Besides,” she looked up to the stairwell her brother was hanging from, “I thought Vaughan could whip up a fake ID for me.”
“A family of criminals,” Cedric lamented. “How do you know Vaughan can make a fake?” Then he looked up the stairwell to his sober looking son, standing there innocent in pajama bottoms, and a tee shirt.
“You can make a fake, can’t you?” he said to the fifteen year old.
Humbly, Vaughan nodded.

Cedric Fitzgerald was not ashamed of the way his children had turned out, so he could not say that he blamed himself for them. He could say he was, in part, responsible for them. But blame was another word with a whole other set of connotations.
Cedric remembered a morning he’d taken the kids to Mass with him. The babysitter had walked out when Madeleine dropped gum in her hair. Vaughan had consented to being lifted up, dandled, and made much of. Then, smiling gleefully, he had pissed all over the babysitter’s lap.
“There was malice in him,” she swore to Cedric. “He meant to do it.”
“Of course he meant to do it,” Cedric replied, reaching into the cradle for his son. “He’s a baby. He had to pee.”
And this was Cedric’s logic. It was his logic whenever he was reprimanded for his children. When the nuns at Our Lady of Jamnia had come to him and said, “Madeleine won’t kneel with her back straight, and she won’t fold her hands straight in front of her for Communion,” Cedric had asked why it mattered. When Miss Pruitt had said that Vaughan was untamable, Cedric had said, “Why would I want to tame my children? If Black people had been less tame, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to get off the plantation.”
But right now Vaughan was only a year old. Madeleine three. Cedric marched up the steps of the brick church, holding a hand of each while they gabbled to each other.
“Maddy. Vaughan,” he said as they reached the brass doors covered in panels of saints and doves.
The two round brown faces looked up at him expectantly.
“Shush.”
Once in the vestibule, Vaughan gabbled some nonsense to his sister, and Madeleine said something back in broken English. This time he gave them both the look, and neither dared to say a word until they were all out of church.
That was the secret. Cedric would see Kevin and Aileen struggling with their mess of sticky, dirty, and ill-mannered children every Sunday, going red in the face, and Cedric was sure that it was because the two of them had never learned the power of The Look. The promise of pain in The Look was so full that it rarely had to be delivered.
Cedric could count on one hand the times he had spanked both of his children. His mother had once lied to him and said, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you.” He knew this was a lie because Cedric had known his mother pretty well, and now he knew himself, and spanking his children had not been a particularly painful experience on his part. Worn out, exhausted by naughtiness, it had actually proved to be quite satisfying for him.
And that was why he had never done it again.
They were at Mass early. Confession was going on. Cedric, sitting in the half light of the church, saw Kevin Foster walk in. He was marching with purpose, his blue jumpsuit on, covered with oil, his cap in his hand. He stopped by the confessional in the arcade. He looked up. The light was green. He pushed the door and went in. The confession was not long, and then Kevin left, and Ralph came out in a white robe. It was Cedric, a few old people, and the children sitting in the dimly lit church waiting for Mass to begin. Ralph went to the altar, knelt, and then went into the sacristy beyond to get dressed for Mass.
After everyone had departed, Cedric did not leave. He and the kids went to the rectory, and they tormented Father Brumbaugh who considered such torment to be “play” and bad children to be “cute.”
“I’ll have to bring them here more often,” Cedric said. “You got any juicy gossip from the confessional?” Cedric said, only half joking. The truth was that more than one tale slipping from Ralph’s mouth had led to a poem or an off Broadway play, the occasional TV show manuscript.
“Didn’t have any,” Ralph shrugged. “I only had one confession today. Some boy, probably twenty or something came in carrying on about how he was having an affair.”
Cedric almost dropped his burning cigarette.
“It happens,” Ralph said.
Ralph was sworn to keep the confessional a secret, but in the priest’s mind if no names were attached it wasn’t gossip. And Ralph didn’t know who had been in the stall. Cedric did, and in his mind, to give out that information was to turn an almost harmless story into gossip.
Ralph’s green eyes widened. He looked like he’d just committed murder.
“You saw the one... The one who’s having the affair. Didn’t you?”
Cedric nodded.
“Well, now then that’s your confession. You’re the priest today. And that means you can’t tell me who it was.”
Once again, Cedric could only nod.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I have had a long day and am pretty tired so don't really have much to say but, I am really enjoying this story! Did not expect the revelation of the affair. Maybe I have missed some details. I look forward to more tomorrow and I hope you are having a great week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

No, I think this is the first time the affair has been brought up. Well, you have had a long day and you should get some rest. There might be something on here tomorrow night, but this story won't be back till Thursday. I'm glad you're having fun with it. Talk to you soon. Have a good night.

 

[ChrisGibson]

v i i i

THE OTHER DAY, MEGHAN BERGHEN drove north with her sisters to visit their cousins by Lake Erie. She came back with a pile of rocks, and now was sorting them out at the table, thinking to herself how drab they looked out of the lake, and how much nicer they would be in a vase of tap water. Yesterday Alice tossed pebbles out into Erie, and Ida commented, “I guess they’ll be back here in a thousand years or so.”
“But we won’t,” said Meghan.
“We might,” said Alice. “You don’t know how things work. We might be here again to toss them back.”
Meghan shrugged. Alice had always been like that. Then, Meghan confessed, she didn’t really know that she wouldn’t be back in a thousand years.
“That’s a cool rock collection, Mrs. B.”
Meghan looked up, startled to see Money Caroll standing beside Kirk. Money Caroll was the new thing in his bed and, as much as Meghan hated to admit this, it seemed like she would be the thing to last. She didn’t hate her. Not really. Money was a pot head- this went without saying. But she was a petite girl with a round, full face, and wide hazel eyes, and she spoke in a high, raspy voice that Meghan did not think was intentionally sensuous. Money was a charming girl, even with those dreadlock things.
“Thanks, Money,” Meghan said. While shaping the pebbles into a triangle, she told them what Alice had said about coming back in a thousand years.
“You could all come back together,” Money said, and Meghan was not sure if the girl was serious.
“Like in that jati thing we learned about in class. Remember, Kirk?”
Kirk nodded, but Meghan was sure her son had not come to talk about jatis. Whatever the hell a jati was.
Harv Berghen had come from that Eleventh Street group of Labanese, Iraqui and Arab people who now, mysteriously, all had Anglo names. Kirk was skinny, and a little over medium height, the way his grandfather had been. Lately, Kirk looked like the old man. He had a sort of serious face, and he had grown a thin beard and mustache. His hair was black, and it needed to be cut. He was looking as if he were waiting to say something important.
Meghan raised an eyebrow, and waited for her son to speak.
“It’s Luke,” Kirk said, at last.
“What about him?”
“He lives in a silo, Mom.”
Meghan went back to sorting her rocks, and then asked Money to, “Be a dear and get that glass vase under the sink.”
Money did, and Meghan told her son, “We’ve known that for some time.”
“Well, I don’t think people should live like that.”
“Your cousin Tina’s feeding him all the time,” Meghan said. “Trust me, Luke won’t go hungry, and... He obviously likes living in a silo. Or a factory... Or whatever it is.”
“Well,” Kirk considered this for a moment. “I don’t think I like it.”
“I don’t think I like it either, but this is the way of things. Thanks, Money.” Meghan began to fill the vase with pebbles that tinkled against the bottom.
“I’ll put some water in that, Mrs. B,” Money said.
“I can’t believe the two of you!” Kirk stamped his skinny, blue jeaned leg.
Meghan cocked her head. Here came the social justice lecture. Usually it came when Kirk was about to get high, and forget all the troubles of being human. Meghan confessed she liked her son better when he was stoned.
“Well, damnit, what do you want me to do?” Meghan demanded.
“We should have him stay here!”
“He doesn’t want to stay here!” Meghan said. “We’ve been through this before. Right after his mom left.”
“Well, something should be done,” Kirk decided. He slammed on his feed cap, took out a cigarette, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. Then he turned around and walked out the back door. He almost bumped into Ida coming in with a grocery bag.
“What was that about?” Ida asked her sister.
Meghan shook her head, then she said to Money, “They really do look all pretty and shiny with the water. Thank you, Money.” She stopped, and looked up at Ida. “What is this all about? I don’t know. Kirk’s got a heart and shit. I heard a rumor that he was giving away weed for free.”
“He’s having a sort of... spiritual renewal,” Money said. The tired expression Money gave Meghan was enough to seriously make her consider liking the girl.
“It’s like a combination of Christianity, karma and Alice walking around handing folks sunflowers and joints.”
Ida raised an eyebrow: “Jesus Saves? Life is short? Rock it out?”
Money nodded. “Something like that.”

Back in the garage, Kirk was looking out of his window onto the Denhams’s yard, hand on hip, twitching nervously, his cigarette smoldering and ashing all over the concrete floor.
“Kirk, baby,” Money murmured by way of admonition, “You’re getting weirder and weirder.”
“Something should be done,” Kirk said.
“If he wants to live in a- ”
“People do not live in silos,” Kirk turned around, and stated as if this were an immutable law he had read somewhere and were quoting. “Grain does.”
“Actually the grain doesn’t, either,” Money pointed out. “It lives in fields. Then they gather it up into silos.”
“That—” Kirk declared loudly, lifting a finger into the air, his eyes burning, “is EXACTLY my point!”
Money considered getting very high very quickly.
“I’m gonna get someone who’s got vision to help me talk Luke out of the silos. I’m gonna get someone with a sense of justice, and right, and humanitarianism. And together we’re gonna make Jamnia a more human city for Luke—for my friend—to live in!”
“Or your name’s not Peter Pan?” Money commented.
“That’s right!” Kirk declared, wild eyed, and finished his cigarette thoughtfully.

Cedric jumped out of his seat as the three boys pummeled on the door of his study.
“If you do that again-” he started, looking at Vaughan, Ian and Mackenzie, all in the their winter coats, grinning like idiots.
“You’ve got a visitor,” Mackenzie told him.
They parted ways to let Mr. Fitzgerald through. To Cedric the young man at the door looked like a cross between Ian and Mackenzie. Ian left the doorway, and then Cedric realized it was Kirk Berghen, come out of his garage at last.
“Sir,” Kirk said, manfully, “if you have a moment, I’m here to talk to you about the state of the city, and one Luke Madeary.”
Cedric was perplexed, but intrigued. So he said, “Follow me.” He went back toward his study. Kirk came after. Cedric scribbled a few more lines of what lay on his desk, sighed, and then scribbled something on the bottom.
“That’ll do,” he murmured, and then turning to Kirk, said, “Now let’s talk.”
When Kirk sat down, he leapt up again because Vaughan was screaming.
Ian grinned behind Vaughan, who, eyes wide, was shaking snow from under his shirt.
“I certainly hope,” Cedric commented, “that someone intends to clean my floor.” He turned to Mackenzie who was chuckling.
“How about you?”
Mackenzie stopped, turned red, and said, “Yes, sir.”

RIGHT BEFORE THE snow began, and right before Derrick was leaving, Tina came into the house with Luke.
“Tina! Luke!” Derrick said, still filled with an awe of their coolness.
“Derrick,” Luke commented. And this was a lot for someone cool as Luke to say.
“Derrick, how are you?” that was a lot for Tina to say. God, she even smiled, and looked concerned.
“I’m good, Tina.”
“That’s great. Drive carefully. Oh, by the way, Derrick,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder, and watching him shudder, “I really hope you and your friends will be coming to Madeleine’s show on Friday. She’s going to be great.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said, nodding feverishly. “We’re all coming!”
“That’s great,” Tina smiled. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be into that sort of thing.”
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “We- me and Lindsay. Right Lindsay? All our friends like... all sorts of stuff.”
“Renaissance man,” Luke commented.
“Very catholic,” Tina murmured.
“No,” Derrick said, suddenly alarmed. “I’m Episcopalian.”
Tina tried not to laugh.

“LOOK, TINA, I’M NOT GOING to tell you again,” Lindsay brandished a piece of fried chicken, “Keep your hands off my man.”
“Watch out,” Ross pointed to the drumstick. “She’s armed and she’s dangerous.”
“I’ll club you too, Joe Football,” Lindsay said, biting fiercely into the chicken.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” On her end of the table, Tina, unconcerned, scooped a lump of potato salad onto her plate.
“All this, oooh Derrick, I hope you’ll be coming to the shoooow!”
“I’m just trying to drum up business for Madeleine.”
“Madeleine can get her own business,” Lindsay returned. “You’re just trying to flirt with Derrick.”
“Firstly,” Tina said, beside Luke, “I would never want Derrick. Secondly, he’s an Episcopalian.”
Ian choked on his water. Vaughan laughed, and Mackenzie said, “Ian’s an Episcopalian.”
Tina shrugged. “Not his fault.”
“Very gracious of you, Tina,” Aileen commented. “Are you alright, Ian?”
Red faced, Ian nodded, taking in deep breaths.
Ryan, beside Roy, in a bid to be ecumenical, said, “Grandad was a Presbyterian.”
“Grandad was an asshole,” Tina stated.
Kevin turned her a dangerous gaze, but Ashley, who had remained silent the whole meal, and sat beside Aileen said, “Amen!”
“Well, he was,” Tina continued. “Till the day he died he was pissed off I wasn’t aborted.”
“Tina,” Aileen said in that false grown-up voice.
“And I’m not saying I haven’t often felt like Ashley might have benefited from being aborted—”
“You hag!” Ashley snapped.
“But,” Tina pressed on, nonplused, “I certainly don’t want to be aborted.”
“Well, don’t worry, Martina,” Aileen said, “I promise I’ll never abort you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”

The snow was falling steady when both cars arrived at 1959 Michael Street, Rodder’s Probe coming from the east and Tina’s LTD from the west. It was too cold to exchange greetings beyond a wave and a smile. Even the simple insults that spilled from Tina’s mouth like water froze on the wind and made her shut up.
When they entered the house, Tina was startled to see her cousin Kirk sitting in the living room in the easy chair across from Cedric, both men smoking furiously, and talking in earnest as the ghosts of Pall Malls and Monarchs rolled from their mouths and nostrils like fog.
They both looked up at Madeleine, Vaughan, Tina, Mackenzie and lastly, Luke, then at each other. Old Coconut was barking outside the door.
“Let that damn dog in,” Cedric told Madeleine. Then he turned to Luke. “Is it true you live in a silo?”
“It’s not a silo. It’s the factory over the tracks on Michael Street,” Luke said, and immediately he sounded stupid to himself.
The dog came in, yapping and banging its yellow tail about everywhere.
“Well, you’ll be staying here tonight,” Cedric said.
Before Luke could open his mouth, Cedric said, “Yes, I know, community is a huge imposition. I’m sure you’re used to having your freedom and doing whatever people do in abandoned factories and warehouses. But tonight all you’ll be doing is freezing. So you’ll stay here.”
Kirk looked on, smiling fiercely, full of approval for the way events were being handled.
“In fact,” Cedric said. “You’ll winter here. We’ve got an extra room on the first floor, most of the second floor and the attic are never used. The basement is a maze of rooms, most of them empty. Tomorrow you can splash around and find your place. Tonight I suggest you sleep in the spare room next to the library.”
Luke, for once caught off guard, stood in his beaten up suede coat, still quiet until Cedric said, “You may speak, now.”
Luke sought for words, opened his mouth. Nothing came out. At last he said, “Thank you, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
Cedric only shrugged.

There are no rules here, none that I can tell.
What made it easy to live over the tracks, and hard to live anywhere else were rules, or how I felt about them. And I guess how I felt about them was how my mother felt about them.
She never said why she married my dad, though I always thought it was because he got her pregnant. But I know she didn’t stay because of Rules. I don’t know if he was really strict, or if this was just the way I thought he was from what she said. She feared rules like I feared them. When I was with my mom we were free. And then she left and I was at the house on Windham for a little bit. Then I left. Dad came looking for me.
Back then I used to think we’d gone a long way off to flee from Dad, and he was some monster. Now I think he may have only been a mini-monster, and I realize that we did not flee far. We just left Eleventh Street. It was also a long time before I found out why my mom and Meghan Berghen were friends, why I spent so much time in Kirk’s shadow. It turns out my dad was a cousin of Meg’s husband, Kirk’s dad. And they all grew up together on Eleventh Street. But I didn’t learn that from Meghan or my mother or anyone but Mr. Stearne of all people. I can’t remember why he told me.
I can remember what my mother would tell me.
“I grew up the youngest of three girls,” she would say. “We lived in my Grandfather’s huge house, and he treated us poorly because my mother, his only daughter, had married an Irishman against his will. Grandfather was a Lebanese doctor and never spoke English when he was home. Though often he spoke French. When my father was killed in a car wreck, my mother came home with us, but only under the terms that she remain in black at all times and never speak. It was the Sixties, but she was not allowed to speak, and not just because she was a woman, but because she was declared dead. Her father had done this the moment she’d married against his will.
So the Sixties was going on everywhere except for in our house on Eleventh Street. The time came when Mother had to retire to the attic, and she never came out. Meals were placed at her door. We could come and see her, but she could not come out.
Then, one day we went in and she wasn’t there. I didn’t find out what happened to her for another five years.”
But my Mother never tells me what did happen to her.
“From that time on, from when I was seven years old going to Our Lady of Jamnia, and then in high school going to Saint Mary’s, up until I went to college and found my mother again, I lived in a house where women never sat with men. They brought in food, they left, they kept silence, and Grandfather and the uncles would laugh and say, “Women! What do they know?”
This is what she knew of home and rules. What else could she pass on to me?
I told Mr. Fitzgerald, who likes to be called Cedric this, and he laughed.
“We run by Crawford Street Rule here,” he said.
I must have given him a look that said I didn’t know what he was talking about.
He explained.
“We always thought you all on Eleventh Street might be crazy. We were crazy too, up on Crawford. Only a block away and a world of difference.
“I grew up in my grandmother’s house. And it was my grandmother’s, not my grandfather’s. She had five kids, none of them ever moved away. And there were always cousins, more for the summer than at any other time. Most of them came from Louisiana.
“I remember Beanie and Daisy and Reval. They were all light skinned and had straight hair and thought they were really pretty. They came from Oklahoma and whenever they were here they were high as kites. My mother used to say they were trash and tell me to stay away from them. Daisy was a little older than me, but she was my aunt, really a child of my grandfather’s from one of his women. The one time my grandfather raised a hand to rule his house it was at Daisy, after she’d gotten pregnant again, ‘You shan’t shame me. You shan’t!’ I remember him thundering, and her on the floor, cowering and weeping with fear and shame.
“But she did shame him. To the tune of at least two more illegitimate kids. All of them went through the house on Crawford. There were cousins I didn’t know how I was related to.
“I didn’t know about my father’s family either,” Cedric told me, “because I didn’t know who he was until I was almost too old to care. My mother was fast and free. That’s the morher my sister never knew. Even after Gladys cleaned her act up, and we got our own apartment (it was down the street, right at the junction where Crawford turns to Eleventh), the old crowd still came by...
“The old crowd.... When they came to my grandmother’s house, she locked herself in her room and spent the night praying the rosary... Miss Cody- who was the fiercest drag queen this side of San Francisco, all the gay men who lived over in Boystown, and went to Chicago all the time, they were all always here. And my father brought his friends over, and they gambled and smoked all night and sometimes he took notice of me, then he stuffed my pockets with money. Later, when I was older, I made him take notice of me so that he always stuffed my pockets with money.”
I asked Cedric what happened to him.
“He did the decent thing in the end,” Cedric told me, “and died. When I was about fifteen, he got drunk one night and he and a train met each other. Right in front of your precious factory, which is where he worked when he worked. It was operational back then. When my mother told me, she was dry eyed. So was I. I couldn’t pretend to be injured. I thought, believe it or not, well there go my wads of money every two weeks. But looking back I think it was a grace that he died before I was old enough to resent him.”
So Cedric amazed me. I looked up at him for a while. He was expressionless. At last he said.
“So live and let live, and stay out of folks ways,” he concluded.
“That’s Crawford Street Rule.”

MADELEINE WAS THINKING OF WHAT she’d tell her father even as she was pulling up her black stockings. There was a thump at the door.
“I’m not dressed yet,” Madeleine shouted.
Rodder opened the door and came in anyway.
“Rod!”
“I already know what you look like,” he said.
“Well, as long as you’re here, zip me up.”
“Uh oh,” Rodder murmured, coming behind her to zip the black strapless. “Is Cedric gonna let you out of the house in this?”
“I’ve already thought about it,” Madeleine said. “And if he says no, I’ll just have to explain that I’m a grown woman, and I’ve got to look like one, and this is a very tasteful dress given the setting.”
“There you go,” Rodder said, kissing her on the neck and stepping back. “But what if he still says no?”
Madeleine wrinkled her nose and said, “Then that’s when I cry.”
“You look wonderful,” Rodder told her.
“Yeah,” Madeleine agreed. “I always think it’s the height of taste to know when you look good and when you don’t. Speaking of... you look rather dashing yourself, Mr. Gonzales.”
“Am I sexy?”
“Always.” Madeleine came closer to him, then backed away at the thump on the door.
“It’s me,” Vaughan said.
He opened the door without admission, still shaking the card dry.
“Here’s your ID. ” He showed it to Rodder first. “It would have been done sooner, but I was busy.”
“Doing what?” Madeleine asked.
“Having a life.”
“This is professional,” Rodder nodded, impressed, then passed it to Madeleine.
“Oh, Vaughan, I could kiss you,” Madeleine said. “In fact I think I will.” She kissed her brother. He said, “Enough of that.” Then: “Nice, dress. Where’s the rest of it?”
“Don’t start,” Madeleine warned her brother, still shaking the ID dry. “I’ll get enough from Daddy.”
The doorbell rang downstairs, and when Madeleine, Rodder and her brother came down there were Mackenzie, Tina and Ian. Madeleine was surprised by how beautiful they all looked. Tina was actually wearing a burgundy wrap and she had on a deep red gown.
“Ten dollars at the consignment,” she whispered to Madeleine. Tina’s hair was a red gold fire in this light, and her eyes sparkled wickedly.
“Wow,” Vaughan said, looking at both Mackenzie and Ian.
“I know,” Ian said, pointing to Mackenzie. “Doesn’t he look great!”
Mackenzie went red and tried to stop himself from running to splash his face with water. He didn’t know if he was supposed to blush when a guy complimented him.
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Vaughan said, filling the gap in the conversation.
“Daddy,” Madeleine began, taking her coat off, knowing he would see the dress before long anyway, “I know this is short, and that you—”
“Oh, who gives a damn!” Cedric said. “The judges need a little leg.” He struck a match, and lit the cigarette that was clenched between his teeth.
“Show ‘em what you got.”

As they drove across town, Madeleine’s heart was racing. As they crossed the river into Canaan, and drove all over the city, she wondered if they might even be late. They were not. Backstage she drank lots of water, and Rodder paced back and forth and told her she’d do fine. She loved him, but wanted him to shut up. Madeleine felt claustrophobic with the largeness of Rod’s physical presence in that hot little dressing room.
When it was her turn, Madeleine strutted out onto the stage. Tina popped up with her guitar. Madeleine Fitzgerald looked all around her. There was Daddy and Vaughan. And Aunt Louise had shown up with Claudia. Claudia had dragged Hakim with her. Ida was here. So was Meghan Berghen. And what was Derrick Todd, silly looking thing, doing here? And Lindsay beside him, looking as if she’d just swallowed a lemon. Mr. Stearne was here too! And Ian and Roy and Kevin and Aileen, and Mackenzie. Nearly everyone in her life was right here. The majority of the crowd was this huge web cast over Jamnia by the Fitzgeralds. She was filled with an emotion that approached awe more than love, or maybe this was love. Whatever it was she couldn’t imagine them all here just to see her. She couldn’t bear the sight of them all, all this love.
So she closed her eyes, shut the world out, gave Tina the motion to start playing, and then opened her mouth to sing.


END OF CHAPTER... MORE TOMORROW?

 

[CharmedFan28]

Tina is fast becoming one of my favourite characters again! I like that she stands up for herself with regards to Lindsay. I wonder if Luke will continue to live in the factory? I guess I will have to wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to more whenever you post it!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I absolutely love Tina. She is one of my favorite characters. Rereading the dinner table scenes, I suspect that Tina is actually Kevin and Aileen's favorite child and they keep her around solely for entertainment value. If you think she's something now just wait till part two. That's all I can say without giving stuff away!

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE BEGIN THE END OF THE FIRST HALF OF OUR STORY


P A R T

T H R E E
































LOVE


He brought me to the
Banqueting house
And his banner over me was love…

His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand embraces me
- The Song of Songs


C H A P T E R

F I V E


THE CHRISTMAS SEASON PASSED WITHOUT lethal event. Madeleine did not win the contest, which meant she did not get the job, and in a rare show of macho aggression, Rodder mentioned pounding the judges. It was so funny to Madeleine, and she laughed so long that finally he laughed too, and then she said, “No wonder we finally won the championship against Bashan! Such a bone crushing quarterback!”
But for Madeleine all was not even close to lost. A man who worked at the coffee shop out in Belmont heard Madeleine, and wanted to know if she and Tina could do an act. Their first gig (Tina walked around her house saying “gig” over and over again until Aileen threatened to strangle her) would be the Friday before Christmas.

Roy went more frequently to the Foster’s house, and Ian was usually at the Fitzgerald’s with Vaughan and Mackenzie. The two boys realized that Vaughan had become quieter lately, and one of them would disturb him from his meditation- or whatever he was in- by throwing a wad of paper at him.
“What?” Vaughan would say, shaking his head and blinking.
“That’s what we wanna know,” Ian would reply.
When Roy would come home, his mother would demand, “Did they treat you nicely? What did Aileen say? Is she nice to you?”
It got to the point that Roy would look for telltale signs of something evil in Aileen when he came to visit. She was fierce. If she was home from work, then something was usually baking in the over. She would be sitting at the kitchen table with her long golden hair pulled back in a ponytail, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and a martini before her. But she was scarcely evil. Sometimes she just looked amused.
“What about Kevin?” Race would ask. “Mr. Foster.”
“Oh, he’s real nice.”
And Roy would go on and on about him, and how nice he was at home, and in gym class how he let him get away with things. Roy wanted to take him for chemistry next year.
“Well, that’s good,” Race would say, seeming satisfied.
But then Roy began wondering if he didn’t have a crush on Mr. Foster. There wasn’t anyone he could confide in about that but his cousin.
“It’s just hero worship,” Ian told him.
“Like the way you feel about Mackenzie?” Roy said.
“What?” The question had completely caught Roy’s older cousin off guard, and for the rest of the night Roy Cane sensed that he’d said the wrong thing.

One night, Race spoke randomly, as was her way:
“You should bring the boy over here,” Race said to Roy.
“Hum?”
“The boy,” Race repeated. “Your friend, Ryan. Bring him over here to visit you.”

In the Foster house, Ryan was less prone to violent outbursts, though outbursts were all that came from him to the point that Ross would lay a large hand on his little brother’s spindly arm, and say, “Chill out and let some food get in your mouth, Ry!”
Ryan filled his mouth while his hands moved all around the table taking rolls and beans, and roast and whatever else was there, and the whole time rambling continuously. Aileen thought it was a miracle that he managed to never make a mess and there was never food on his face. She and Tina regarded the boy with a similarly amused smile that nearly made them look like twins. Kevin’s elfin face beamed on. The topic of conversation was always Roy. Roy this, Roy that.
Roy has read every Jules Verne book there is. Roy is going to be on school newspaper next year. Roy wants to play a guitar, and when he learns he’ll show me. As Mackenzie listened he perceived that his new friend’s cousin was rapidly becoming Ryan’s big brother figure. Part of him thought it wasn’t wise to make a hero out of Roy, or a big brother either. After all, what would happen when Roy got older, or if he got more popular? After all Roy wasn’t really Ryan’s big brother.
I am. The other part of Mackenzie realized that for whatever reason he had never been much of a big brother to Ryan. He was only about three years older, but Lindsay and Ross crept up between the two of them. And the whole Tourettes thing. Mackenzie did not want to admit that, but there it was. And by the time the youngest and most troubled Foster had come along, Mackenzie already had Tina and Vaughan.
And Vaughan isn’t your brother either. Not really.
The thought made Mackenzie so mad, that when Lindsay said, “You act like that kid’s your brother instead of Ian Cane’s skanky little cousin...” Mackenzie shouted, “Of course he’s Roy’s brother!”
Kevin and Aileen both looked at Mackenzie so sharply he was afraid, and then it seemed as if they were afraid.
“I just meant,” Mackenzie grew quieter. They were all looking at him now. “Ryan’s always needed a big brother.”
“He’s got us,” Ross said.
“Not really,” Mackenzie shook his head and went on. “It’s like me and Vaughan. You know? Vaughan’s my brother. So why can’t Roy be Ryan’s.”
Mackenzie could only describe the look on his father’s face as profound relief. Mackenzie figured he’d said something profound. Maybe his parents, who had never been particularly profound, were waiting for a profound message from him.
Suddenly Ashley said, “But Vaughan is Black!”
Tina looked at her twin and said, “You are so STUPID.”

The Friday before Christmas, Roy and Ryan had both said they wanted to see Madeleine and Tina’s act. Accordingly, Ian was supposed to pick them up. He had dropped them off at his Aunt Race’s house after school. But Ian was still getting dressed when it was nearly time for the show, and against his instinct he’d asked his father to bring the boy’s here on his way home from work. After all, it made little sense to drive back into town and then race back out here toward Belmont, whose border was right down the road.
When Mr. Cane had reached his sister’s house, the first thing he did was grab a beer from the refrigerator, and then shout up the stairs for the boys.
When they came running down in their zipped up hoodies, Mr. Cane bawked, slapped his knee and laughed. He looked to Race, who looked annoyed.
“What?” she said.
“Look at ‘em. At the two of ‘em!”
Roy was confused. Ryan looked to his friend for an answer.
“Boy,” Mr. Cane said to Ryan. “Who’s your Daddy?”
Suddenly Ryan shouted, “Shit!” And then let out a whole series of paint peeling expletives before saying, “Kevin Foster.”
Mr. Cane had waited patiently for all the swear words to pass. Now at the name “Kevin Foster” Mr. Cane slapped his knee and laughed again.
Race ignored her brother, and looked up at the boys. “Are you coming home or staying with Ian?”
“Staying with Ian,” Roy said, placing a hand on Ryan’s shoulder, and maneuvering him down the stairs. He wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but he didn’t feel like coming home tonight. Then, looking at his uncle, he didn’t feel like staying on Sandcastle Road either. Later that night, when Roy brought up the whole situation to Ian, his older cousin had the same expression Race had borne.
“What?” Roy said.
Ian shook his head, thought about it a while, then told his cousin.
“A long time ago Ryan and Mackenzie’s dad went out with Aunt Race. But don’t bring it up because then she’ll know I told you. Anyway,” Ian said, as if anticipating the next question, “they went together before Tina was even born.”

School was out by then. A week before Tina had knocked everyone’s socks off in Barefoot in the Park- no pun intended- and this time she’d come out and let the crowds have their way with her. Then, for an hour in the back seat of her LTD, she’d let Luke try to have his way with her. He got pretty far, farther than anyone else ever had.
Christmas was on a Tuesday. Aileen didn’t work Christmas Eve. She slept in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and then that afternoon began the long work of preparing food, and preparing food to be prepared later when the half drunk Aunts and Mother arrived. Aileen wrapped presents, ironing clothes out. It was all done with a goal toward being in the bathtub by six. While everyone else was downstairs eating leftovers, she would be here in the master bath, treating herself well, going to sleep, and then waking up at around nine-forty-five to start dressing so that they’d all be in church by 11:45 for midnight Mass.
Things were in no less of an uproar at 1959 Michael except that Cedric never let himself be part of the uproar. He was a morning person. After morning Mass he came home and finished everything that needed to be done, and was resting by three in the afternoon. Vaughan and Madeleine went with Mackenzie to the mall to do last minute shopping that, for them, was all of their shopping.
“We’re not taking forever,” Vaughan declared as they climbed out of the car, “I’m broke and impatient. This ought to be quick and cheap like a whore on Main Street.”
Luke did not go, however. He was making himself scarce. He tried to coax Old Coconut to come to the factory with him, but the yellow dog was used to too much good living, and refused to freeze, nor would she allow her master to either. Luke walked around a long time. He came near downtown where the peach colored library sat with its white pillars. He walked in, leaving Old Coconut outside. Luke thought of browsing around, but the dog must have picked up on this because as soon as he was about to move through the security gate, Old Coconut gave a sharp and very pissed off bark.
When Luke arrived back at the house, Cedric was sitting up playing the piano, and Kirk Berghen of all people was present.
“What are you moping about?” Cedric demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Cedric mocked him. “Which means something. This is the one time of year when you probably have an excuse to be wretched. Everyone looks around,” Cedric bammed on the piano a few times, and spun around, “and sees all the stuff they haven’t got.”
“Well, what I haven’t got,” Luke said, “is any way to get presents for anyone I care about.”
“So what?” Cedric said.
“So....” Luke started, but ‘So what?’ was always a bad question from Cedric’s mouth.
Luke grimaced and said, “I just want a little bit of my own money. That’s what sucks about the freedom bit. If you don’t have a phone they can’t call you back and—”
“Ey, Luke?” Luke turned to look at Kirk.
Kirk gave him a smile that was distinctly predatory, and let smoke pour out from between his red lips.
“Would you just hate to pump gas and maybe, in the spring, do a little gardening?”
Looking puzzled, Luke shook his head.
“Well, then Merry Christmas. Bring your ass to the station the day after New Years.”
Luke turned from Kirk to Cedric. He didn’t know what to say.
“Say thanks,” Cedric instructed, and then went back to playing piano.

It hadn’t snowed, and Vaughan was resigned to a dry Christmas. But as nine o’clock approached, and he and Madeleine were getting dressed, the first flurries began to show themselves.
“It will be a white Christmas!” Vaughan announced to his father.
“Wonderful,” said Cedric in the tone of anyone who has been behind the wheel in a Midwestern winter.
After midnight Mass, they returned home with Luke who had been silent through the whole thing. Vaughan and Madeleine were in the choir, so Luke sat between Ida and Cedric. Cedric thought the boy looked as if he’d never been inside a church before. Maybe he hadn’t.
Ida and Ralph came back to Michael Street. They all drank rummed out egg nog, and played records on the old hi-fi. They opened presents right away.
“Go get yours first,” Madeleine told Luke.
He looked surprised and a little silly, a very grown looking boy with thick hair, squatting childlike on the floor in the dress pants Cedric had gotten him. He crawled on his knees to the large fir, and began searching through the pile of elaborate boxes while Cedric looked on, amused.
Face stolid and a little frowny, Luke kept asking, as he pulled box after box from under the tree, “How many of these are for me?”
There was a light rap at the door and then Tina came in without waiting for an answer, followed by Mackenzie. The light caught their hair, shiny bronze, bright gold. Flakes of snow sat in it. They were radiant, carrying shiny boxes.
“Mom says don’t forget dinner is at three p.m.,” Tina told her grandmother, Ralph and Cedric, dumping boxes beside Luke as she ran a hand over his head, and was startled by him catching her hand in his, and holding it for a long time.
Mackenzie dropped boxes on the other side of Luke.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, and took off his black dress coat, heading for the closet. He was still in his suit.
“You’re filling out,” Ida declared. “Mackenzie Foster, you’re turning into a heartbreaker.”
“Grandma!” Mackenzie turned red and rolled his eyes at Vaughan. But Vaughan realized that Mackenzie was turning into a heartbreaker.
Meanwhile Luke still knelt before his pile of presents, and Ida said, “Well come on, open up something.”
Luke got up quickly, and headed for the bathroom. The dog only lifted an ear and cocked his head in mild concern.
“I’ll be back in a moment guys,” they heard Luke shouting from down the hall.
“You do realize,” Ralph said after a moment, “this is probably one of the first Christmases he’s ever had?”
“Tina, why don’t you go after him,” Ida suggested to her granddaughter.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Tina whispered.
“I don’t think he’d want me to see him cry.”

Then the Twelve Days began. A rough circuit of the same people, primarily centered around the Fitzgeralds and Fosters went from Aileen and Kevin’s house on Christmas, to the Fitzgerald’s on Saint John’s day. The Fosters headed toward Windham Street the next day, and then to an assortment of other relatives. But Cedric took his kids to Louise’s, one day and then up until New Year’s Eve they ate with the cousins on Crawford Street. New Year’s was at Windham Street and everyone who was no one showed up. The day after New Year’s was Windham Street as well, followed by a day at Holy Spirit monastery, Ralph’s abbey. This was always Vaughan’s favorite trip. And then Twelfth Night was back at Michael Street. School started up again on the third of January, but Cedric never sent his kids until after the Twelve Days. For years those had been days of nothing less than magic for Vaughan and Madeleine. This year Luke was with them and Vaughan, at least, saw it through his eyes. The Twelve Days were a spectacle of loud parties and quiet solemnities. Ian was with them. The night they went to the monastery Vaughan, his two friends on either side of him, knelt before the candlelit crèche, and looked on the face of Jesus. Later, Ian crawled into the huge bed with Vaughan and Mackenzie, and they lay in the dark chattering a long time. To Vaughan it felt like childhood all over again when Tina and Madeleine had shared the bed with he and Mackenzie.
Finally, the chattering had given way too quiet and Ian said, “What’s it all about? Really, I mean. Baby Jesus and the manger.”
“It’s about us,” Vaughan said promptly. “Us right here, chattering away in this bed and being with each other and being friends and…. God’s alright with it. He likes it. So he became a person too.”

LUKE CRAWLED OUT of his bed in the study, and went next door to where Cedric and Ida and Ralph were still up.
They all looked up at him.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” he said. “Because no one’s ever... done this for me before. I mean... people aren’t like this. I just wanted to thank you guys—all of you. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mrs. Law— ”
“Oh, now stop,” Ida waved it off, smiling so that her face turned into a maze of crinkles. “Honey, that’s what life’s about.”

The whole January world was covered in white except for the black line of Michael Street, and the black square of the parking lot across the field. Vaughan was in the BBC- orium watching a taped rerun of Monarch of the Glen and debating with himself if he should try out for something next year. If even Tina Foster was getting involved in school, then maybe it was time to re-evaluate how he thought of involvement. Maybe he’d even get into the next musical.
“Ta! Da!”
Vaughan turned around to see Ian and Mackenzie.
“The two of you look so retarded,” he told them.
“Yes, that’s the point of a band uniform,” Ian told him. “I thought you knew that.”
“I’d had my sneaking suspicions.”
` “And if you had been in band,” Mackenzie said, flopping down beside his old friend, the visor of his large hat falling into his face, “then you would be going to Florida with us.”
“Flor...? What!” Vaughan shouted.
“It’s not in Chicago. We got third place for the band competition... which is Florida. Go fig.” Ian grinned. “I can’t wait to get out my Speedo.”
“And let the whole state see how pale and white we are?” Mackenzie raised an eyebrow.
“I can’t believe you’re going to Florida,” Vaughan said, sounding winded.
“If you’d just played that triangle like I suggest-= ”
“Stuff it, Mackenzie.”
Ian and Mackenzie thought that “stuffing it” would be a very good idea. They had already said that what would suck about it was not being able to take Vaughan along. They knew he would put on a good face about it, but this couldn’t be pleasing. It wasn’t until they’d left Vaughan’s house that they said anything.
“I don’t want to room with Fatass again,” Ian said.
“I don’t want Kirby and the Dorks Everlasting,” Mackenzie said as they were coming down the steps. Snow had begun falling, but he was suddenly conscious of the fact that his hair was one of his best features, and he didn’t want to hide it or his face under a hood. He was turning vain.
“Wanna room with me?” The phrase came out so quickly he wasn’t sure if Ian had comprehended it.
Ian looked like he hadn’t, and then, suddenly, he broke out into a smile and said, “Yeah. This’ll be great.”
For so many reasons, Mackenzie knew Vaughan could not have been present when he’d made that proposition to Ian.

 

[CharmedFan28]

A great start to chapter 5! Vaughan and Tina are still some of my favourite characters but I am liking others such as Mackenzie, Ian and Luke quite a bit too! It was interesting to read how all the characters celebrated Christmas. Great writing and I look forward to whichever story you post more of tomorrow! Also, no need to apologise about not responding yesterday. We all have busy days and nights sometimes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Was I busy, or did I just pass out on the sofa and forget? Let's say I was busy. At any road, supposing you do get this and are able to respond: tomorrow more Hidden Lives will happen, and... tonight you get two question if you have them.

 

[CharmedFan28]

The only question I can think of is how long ago was this particular story written?

 

[ChrisGibson]

This story was written, at least in rough draft form, a year or so out of college, so around 2002. It's been revised several times and the last revision was about two years ago, but I still keep it set in the time when it was written. It is the only story that has a specific time, I think.