by Caldon Mull
“Hey…” I blinked and Michel was watching me, chin resting on his folded arms, stretched out on the bed next to me.
“Hi.” I croaked and reached for the glass of water on my bedside table. Next to it was a little half- ruined wooden Ferrari “You making this a habit?” I tried to smile.
“Nope. You are.” Michel smiled without humour. “I found you in the sandpit at the bottom of the garden. Parsons said you often went there when you were troubled. You had that little thing in your hand, you must’ve dug it up when you were thrashing around. You remember any of it…? It looked like you had a fit or something down there.”
“No… I don’t remember a thing…” I shook my head and looked at my skinned knuckles “…and this?”
“You wrecked a whole lotta garden fence, and the swings and kinda tore up the wendy house. It’s a mess down there, Andy… looks like you were trying to smash everything you could see down there.” Michel sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. “I found you and brought you up. At least by then you must’ve ‘bin exhausted.”
“How long?… not days?” I whispered “Please not…”
“No, buddy… only a coupla hours. It’s about ten, now.” Michel sighed and closed his eyes. “After I brought you up and cleaned you up and put you to bed, Parsons came and asked me to go and brush your mom’s hair and talk to her. So I did, and I told her all about me and how I knew you and what you have done in Storyville and y’know… I think she heard me.” Michel swallowed, a tear squeezed out his closed lid “I think she’s trapped in there Andy, I think she can’t do squat about it… but she knows… something.”
“You… you think?” I gulped the water down, my mouth dry as sand.
“Yeah. I do” Michel yawned.
“Oh…” I swallowed and found there was nothing I could say.
“So here’s what’s more I think.” Michel yawned hugely “I think you should go and comb your momma’s hair and tell her all about yourself, so that when the Quacks arrive tomorrow, you got all of that out your system…” Michel grinned sleepily “… an’ you can come back here an’ fuck me until you feel better. That usually works with you. Deal…?” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah.” I whispered watching him drift deeper off into sleep. I got up a little while later and went to the room I had avoided for half my life and sat down at the head of the bed and held mom’s hand and started to tell her who I was. It was nearly sunrise when I put down the brush and kissed her cheek and said “Goodbye, Momma… I’m gonna be alright, I promise…”
I crept down into my room and slipped under the covers with Michel woke him up and took him up on his offer. Afterwards, I crashed into sleep, a deep dreamless sleep for the first time in this house for many, many a year.
Michel woke me up again with some OJ and a quick breakfast. “Feel better?” He grinned as he dabbed himself dry after his shower, slipped on jeans and a t-shirt while I munched the toast.
“Yeah.” I nodded, swallowed “Much.”
“Good.” He rubbed his face.
“What?” I put the plate on the sideboard and grabbed the towel he’d tossed.
“You feel strong enough for today?” he retrieved the plate and the glass, headed for the door. “I mean… really?”
“I guess so.” I sighed and wrapped the towel around my waist “Mano… it’s… it’s not like that, I promise. I feel guilty that I kept her going… sure. But underneath all that I’ve always felt that there was a chance… that she wasn’t ready to go. An… an… I couldn’t give her what she wanted… I didn’t know what was wrong… an… I still don’t know what it is. That make any sense…?” I sighed and headed for the shower. “I’ll join you soon, go up so long. I ‘xpect the quacks are here.”
“Nah. Parsons said within the hour.” Michel leaned against the door-jamb, balancing the plate against his abs with one hand “Y’know, you tougher than you think.”
“Really?” I dropped the towel and cranked the water. The smell of the lavender soap wafted from the cubicle, still damp from Michel. “I don’t feel like that, right now.”
“Yeah. Really.” Michel rubbed his shoulder against the old wood “I don’t know how any of us boys back home could have coped with what you did and still be… normal.”
“I’m… not normal.” I stepped into the spray, sighed as the hot water singed my skin.
“Maybe not… but you look it and you act it… and… an’ in order to do that, you ‘prolly the toughest dude I know. If I look inside me for the right stuff to make me like that… I jus’ don’t have it. It makes me… humble… that you could after all these years, fer so long.”
“Thanks, buddy.” I sighed and started to soap. “I’ll be up soon.”
“Take your time, Big Guy. ‘Jes thought I’d say that.” Michel nodded, lost in thought staring at the empty plate, then he bounced off the door-jamb and closed the door leaving me to make my peace with myself, in a mist of steam.
Awhile later, shaved, scrubbed and somber, I climbed the steps to say goodbye to Mom for the last time. I cannot describe how heavy my feet felt climbing the last flight. All these years Mom had been lying up there and I’d spent more time up there in the last few hours than in nearly fifteen years. I really could not bear seeing her like that and had really avoided going to see her. I knew why now… but as a twelve-year old kid, I couldn’t tell anyone, least of all work out for myself why I was so eager to avoid going and seeing my strong and wise mother laid low like that.
After Dad died and I was extracted from North Africa, I had hoped Mom would be around to tell me it was all right with the world. Getting back and finding her like this was more than I could take, then and almost… now. But now I had spent some time alone with myself, had found some liberation within me and I was stronger, I had friends who could help me through asking all the questions of myself that needed answering.
I hadn’t lied to her when I had told her I was all right. I knew she could smell a lie from me at forty paces and would tan my hide if she ever caught me in one. I was better. Sometimes, I think that I was more myself now than I had ever been. There was no hesitance in my own self now, no fear in seeing myself held up in a mirror. Whatever had broken in myself had healed, but man… it had taken me a long time of not looking, of not being able to look, to get to where I was today.
OK Mom, I thought this is the time for me to make those life and death decisions you were so famous for making. Time for me to be brave enough to put aside what is best for me and to just tough it out and to bring you some peace. Peace after all these years. I cracked the door open, took a deep, ragged breath and stepped inside.
Parsons, Michel and several white clad technicians looked up as I stepped through. Something was wrong.
“Lad, Acey…” Parson looked at me. “she went by herself just a little while ago.”
“I…” I was dumbfounded, a roaring started quietly in my head as I saw the sheet pulled over her, all the equipment silent, resting… their faithful task no longer required. “Whe…”
“Andy!” Michel walked over to me, gripped my arm and pulled me against him “You don’t have to do this anymore, she saved you this… Andy! Focus! Follow my voice back with me. Come, here let me show you something.”
I held his hand as he tugged me towards the bed “No… no…”
“Just look, Andy. Please trust me, please… please, just look.” Michel whispered urgently, “…trust me…? Please…”
“Y… yes…” I felt my chest heaving, sucking breath into my body, I could hardly feel anything except the hot, dry skin of his hand, the hard muscle of his arm under his light knit sleeve. He gently tugged the sheet back and there was mom, a slight smile in her ravaged face, her hair a cascade of luxurious silver fanned out on her pillow.
“Andy…” Michel swallowed thickly, eyes red-rimmed and moist, threatening to spill onto his cheeks “She heard you man… this morning, all the things you said… what she needed to know… She
was just hanging on to make sure you were all right, man… All she needed to hear from you… all she needed to know… was that you were gonna be all right.” Michel sniffed suddenly, his face collapsing at last into a huge, hard cry. He clutched me in his arms and sobbed into my neck “an… an… I guess you got to tell her that… after all these years, you got to tell her that.”
“I’ve never seen her so peaceful, lad.” Parsons looked at me as my own eyes filled up and he blurred in my vision as Michel’s mood finally infected me “And I’ve never seen you cry for anyone, son… not until today.”
“I… never could… I didn’t know… how to…” I moaned and clung to Michel, sobbing my heart out, tearing his knit shirt as I clutched his broad back. “I’m sorry… Momma… I’m sorry I… didn’t bring Poppa back with me…I’m… so sorry.”
I didn’t feel the prick the Doctors must’ve had ready, I just remember Mom’s smile, and the feel of Michel’s solid, dependable hard body as the creeping darkness stole up on me and swept me away…
I awoke in my room sometime later, late afternoon. My clothes were stacked next to me on a chair and I was hungry as hell. Michel was no-where to be seen, even though I sensed he had been in the room recently. I felt… empty. Not like before, my whole life… not dull and cold… but clean and empty… Like something I had been holding onto that was poisonous… like something that could harm me but I couldn’t let go of despite myself… was finally gone.
I dressed quickly and walked down to the kitchen, where I could smell coffee and hear low conversation: Parsons and Michel.
“No… he didn’t, did he?”
“Yip, an then he catches the log in those arms of his an’ says all proud as punch ‘…Ollie, this is a barn raisin’ and not a place fer yer ol’ stoopidhead to git squished… so skee-daddle whydoncha’…’ an’ then he hefts this damn log into place where all the other hands are standin’ agape an’ says like any ol’ cowhand ‘… now you jes’ tie that stay up fella’s, an’ we don’t gotta see another Summers boy with his skull cracked open, yer know how they all run wild over everythin’ they see.” Michel chortled.
“Sounds like he’d got into the swing of things all right.” Parson chuckled pleasantly “I can’t imagine Acey… Andy… being so… so…”
“Heh! But then he swaggers up to Tank, that’s Shane Summers, an’ one o’ the biggest pieces of man-flesh you ever saw in yer life, slaps him on his ass an’ says ‘… ‘cos oncet their heads cracked open, they get to be like Tank here.”
“Oh my…” Parsons chortled with glee “He didn’t!”
“‘Fraid so…” Michel laughed heartily “No word of a lie.”
“And this Tank? What’d he say?”
“Nuthin’.” Michel guffawed “He jes’ picked Andy up and hefted him into the nearest water trough. Then he says ‘… you should’ve let the kid get beaned, Big Guy, ‘cos otherwise I gotta…”
I stepped into the room and finished for Michel “… watch my back in a few years time.”
“You’re up.” Parsons smiled at me fondly.
“Hey, Big Guy.” Michel pushed a steaming cup of coffee to the empty seat of the kitchen table. “How you feel?”
“Good, considering.” I sighed and sipped the brew. “I’m getting tired of asking, but how long this time?”
“You slept for two days, my boy. The funeral service is tomorrow, and then the wake.” Parsons patted my hand. “Michel here stayed with you all the time.”
“Thanks, Painted Horse” I smiled at him “My brother.”
“You’re welcome, Running Deer, my brother.” Michel held my hand on the table “When a man must cry, he should never do it alone. I am glad to help my brother when he most needed me.”
“Ah.” Parsons stood and fetched some cream from the icebox “Michel had told me about your tribal induction. Fascinating. You’ve done so much away from here that I can scarcely match the boy with the man. You have made your own meaning in your life.”
“Cappy is on his way.” Michel nodded “He buried his Pop yesterday. Cat is flying him up now. “
“Acey… Andy…” Parsons hesitated while pouring his cream into his coffee “I’ve asked Michel to stay here while all of this is going on. Also, as we’re only a few miles from his campus, I’ve asked him to consider staying here as long as he needs. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve set aside one of the suite rooms on the third floor, the one with the balcony and the loft.”
“I don’t mind.” I felt my grin of relief before I could stop it. “Stud, mi casa es su casa.”
“Thanks, Andy.” Michel squeezed my hand. “Your house is absolutely magnificent, a pity it feels so… empty.”
“Ah, yes and will feel like this until we have some little Finches fluttering around.” Parsons grinned at me, “Until then, let’s try to get some of your family in here, my boy the ones you’ve found. That way, your old Uncle won’t have to wither away here by himself.”
“Yeah!” I smiled slowly “Yeah, if you all think that would be okay with everyone… I’d like that, I think.”
“You sure?” Michel looked up from his cup. I noticed that Parsons was using the good china, the ones he only used when he was trying to impress the hell out of someone. I thought then that Parsons might really be desperate for some company after all. Fifteen years with Mom and occasionally Cat stopping by must really be weighing heavy on my uncle. I didn’t want to think what his life was like these last few years, I couldn’t bring myself to even consider it.
“Yeah, Stud. I’m sure.” I smiled and nodded. I really didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t trying my best. “Ummm, guys… I don’t want any secrets here, not anymore and not under this roof…” I took a deep breath “Parsons, Michel… I gotta tell you each something.”
“Sure, Andy.” Michel put down his cup and turned to look at me squarely. Parsons shrugged quickly and nodded.
“Ahhhh… No secrets, remember Stud?” I took another deep breath.
“Sure, after the last week, I know you trying. Anything, I don’t mind.” Michel looked quickly at Parsons “Truly, I don’t mind.”
“Parsons?” I could feel a sweat break out on my brow. I wiped at it absently.
“Go ahead, son.” Parsons folded his hands in front of him. “I don’t want to hide anything, I hope you’ll feel better. I’ve always said confession is good for the soul, even though I’m not a priest anymore.”
“Ok, then… Stud?” I looked into his aluminum eyes, finding only calmness and a certain curiosity.
“Yeah?” Michel smiled quickly, reassuring.
“Ummm… you see… Parsons runs The Trust.” I hissed out a long breath, not finished with what I knew would probably be the most difficult confession of all to make. “But… I… am… The Trust. All those documents and all the investment in Cappy’s Lodge… all of that… is me. Your patent and copyright and franchise agreement is all… me.”
“Okaaaay, then.” Michel blinked a few times, then looked up earnestly “You sayin’ you believe in me and in Cappy and whatever help you put forward you hid behind The Trust so you wouldn’t feel like you were handing out charity?”
“Uhhh… yeah.” I mopped at my face, I was trembling and sweating like soft cheese in a hot sun. “I didn’t want you to think I was putting up funding ‘cause of who you were to me, rather than that your ideas and your work was good. You’ve seen your design kits running off the shelves?”
“Yeah, Parsons showed me the figures.” Michel smiled brightly. “Andy… It’s Ok. You didn’t give me a handout, or even a hand up. You showed me a way, an’ I followed it. You makin’ money…?”
“Yeah, heaps.” I sighed, relieved “An’ you getting’ most of it.”
“I know.” Michel chuckled “Parsons…”
“…showed you the figures.” I grinned “But honestly Stud, it’s a relief to tell you.”
“I called it that way, an’ you ‘bin true to that.” Michel leaned over and gripped my
hand. “You are my best friend, don’t ever think you ain’t.”
“Parsons…” I smiled at Michel gratefully and turned to face him. “Yes?” he blinked once, composing himself.
“Michel and I have sex… on occasion.” I cleared my throat. “Really.”
“Oh…” Parson looked at Michel and then at me. “Oh my…”
“Really.” Michel repeated and watched Parsons for a reaction, still holding my hand. “Well now, there’s a thing.” Parsons blushed and looked into his cup. “Well, I was a chaplain in the army, and I know how these things go, Acey… I just didn’t think you were like that.”
“I don’t think I am Parsons, but I do think I don’t care who I love, as long as I can love. It has taken me so long to feel anything at all, and…” I took a deep breath since I was determined to come clean “I couldn’t have done it without feeling with my friends… without actually feeling people I liked very much. It reminded me what should be the case, and it reminded me what I needed to dig at inside myself to experience the feeling all the time… to actually heal myself.”
“I do understand Ac… Andy.” Parsons looked up, smiled. “You’re like a son to me and I cannot think of anything to say except that whatever makes you happy is just fine with me.”
“Thank you.” I let out a sigh I hadn’t know I was holding in. “It makes all the difference hearing that from you.” I shrugged “I guess I was always afraid of you not approving of the way I turned out. I mean, since Dad … died… and Mom… I guess you have been my parent ever since. I… uncle… I just want you not to be disappointed in me.”
“Andy…” Parsons covered my other hand with his “There is nothing in this world that could make me prouder than to watch you grow into the man you have become. I am proud of you, as proud of you as any parent could be. You have done amazing things, and… you have become an extra-ordinary young man.”