Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  “But, mom, we aren’t brother and sister by blood,” I said.

  She rose and came nose to nose with me. “You can’t use us as your family just when it pleases you,” she said crossly, “and cast us aside when you want sex. You’re our son, legally, morally, every way. Children of ordinary understanding know that they must obey their parents. I forbid you to sleep with Sally anymore. She is your sister, no more, no less. She can’t be your girlfriend. You must find another girl, just as she must find a boyfriend. I know that the moral and intellectual maturity of a fourteen-year-old approaches that of a adult, but that’s all the more reason to listen to us.”

  “We love one another,” Sally said, crying aloud.

  “When you’re fourteen, you love yourself. You make each other feel good. How do you know love? Love is sacrifice not self-gratification, and you don’t learn it until later, if you learn it at all. Now let me restate what I said, I forbid you to be with each other intimately ever again.”

  Without waiting for a response, she turned and left with Sally. I acutely felt the need for Una’s council, but I saw I was going to be left with Stan’s. “I fell in love with a girl when I was your age,” he said kindly. “It was different back then. All you could do was kiss a girl. I guess when you’re an orphan you learn everything fast.”

  For the second time that day, he hugged me, and this time I hugged him back. “I’m so sorry to cause you this embarrassment,” I whispered.

  “I think Mary’s a little embarrassed, but not me. Life is full of trouble, Christian. I’ve seen so much suffering and death, especially in the camps, that you sleeping with Sally is but a small infraction, a tiny complication in life, and easily fixed. You weren’t a direct blood-brother to her and you didn’t force yourself onto her. I love you no less for it, but you need to understand, it can’t go on. Remember the shoplifting? It’s like that. Once you were caught, the only clear choice was the one you made back then: Don’t do it again. I know it’s harder this time, but between Mr. Drury and myself, we’ll help you through it. Remember, son, because of Gayle Harris, it’s a legal process as well, so the less they know, the better for all of us. You can be honest with Mr. Drury, but discreet as well. Do you understand?” I nodded, thinking that so far, Stan’s advice was excellent. “Una’s a funny duck not to have warned you of the consequences of letting someone like Aunt Gayle see you two together,” he continued.

  “She did warn us,” I said before I stopped to think.

  “She knew after all?” he asked. “We’ll just keep that between us two for now. How’s the refrigerator going?”

  “I need to attach the installation and coils on the back and plug it in. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just die.”

  “You might have to start working Saturdays to keep yourself busy.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by this. “What I need is more money so I can start going out.”

  “You’re a bit young to be hitting the bars because of a broken heart,” he said with a light grin.

  I looked straight at him and forced out a smile. “When you adopted me, I was already working for people who owned bars. Besides, I don’t drink. I meant rock concerts.”

  If he was shocked at my words, he kept it off his face. “I’ll see what we can do about the money. You can’t go by yourself though. Perhaps Lloyd will take you to a few. If they aren’t too loud, I’ll go with you myself.” I nodded. “Are you hungry?” he asked. Again I nodded. “Come on,” he added. “I will fry us up some sausage.”

  I didn’t really feel like sausage, but I nodded for the third time. The next morning, we went to church. Sally and I were separated by Stan and Mary. I remember Father Mackay’s sermon. “The origin of sin,” he said in his clear vibrant voice, “and the reason for its existence, are a source of perplexity. Many see the work of evil with it’s terrible results and wonder how all this suffering can exist under the reign of one who is infinite in wisdom.” I wondered that exact thing myself. “However, such a thing,” he continued, “is elementary to understand. If we are to be free, truly free, then evil must exist. After all, our choices have to be real. We must be free to choose evil as well as good, or what is the benefit in choice at all? As for what background we choose against, a code of law exists. The Almighty has given to us the guidance of scripture. The Bible sets out the rules. If they seem to you as though natural laws, that impression is not without foundation.

  “The Almighty sent his son to die for our sins and Jesus left us the One True Church as a guide, and other Christian institutions as well. I beg you all, read the bible for yourselves. If you read with care, you’ll know the difference between good and evil, virtue and sin, and wisdom and folly. A Christian is allowed carnal love, but must do so inside the sacrament of matrimony. He is granted the right to earn a profit or a wage, but must give back some of it in charity of one form or another. He’s permitted some worldly pleasures, while understanding that his greater place in the world is to serve the Lord.”

  His words seemed sound-minded and I realized that if I married Sally our problem would be over, but, would the church marry a brother and his stepsister? I decided that I should read the bible and see if there were any loopholes.

  My meeting with Mr. Drury that afternoon took place in the Rose Room at the Tappet Mansion. He seemed much less sad-looking than when I’d first met him. His bald spot was bigger and he had gained weight. He no longer looked like a cop. The back doors were open and the sounds of the summer afternoon came in. He seemed genuinely happy to see me and I told him the types of things I was doing at Tappets, about my school-grades, piloting, basketball, baseball, piano, and other accomplishments.

  “My goodness,” he said with his trademark reserve, “you’re living the life of Riley.” I didn’t know any Riley and had never heard of the television series. “You have all of these things, Christian, and you seem so happy, I just don’t understand it.”

  “I love Sally, and did so, from the moment I first laid my eyes on her.”

  “Everyone should love their sister.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  He looked confused. “I was raised an Anglican, but I no longer believe.”

  “Stan doesn’t either. I want to marry Sally. Is there any way I can?”

  He sighed and shook his head, rubbing his hands together in trepidation. “I was born in Britain, you know,” he whispered. “They have a saying there, ‘Keep a stiff upper lip.’ Do you know what that means?” I had never heard of it and shook my head again. “It means that when you’re doing your duty,” he continued, “to complain is betrayal, and that in life men are bound by duty. To be a man, it must be done with honor or not at all.” I swallowed. This sounded bad. “Duty is doing the right thing by your parents, country, and morality,” he went-on. “Sometimes, it’s doing a soldier’s duty and giving up your very life to protect your nation. It’s hard, but you must do it without complaining. I know you aren’t a coward and that if the Russians attacked America, you would enlist. I can tell you love the Tappets. Don’t destroy them by this continued behavior. Sometimes, you must deny your own needs to do the right thing. It’s complicated, but I see that you understand completely. Don’t touch your sister again! I know the boys in orphanages start sex way too fast. I’m not blind or heartless to your love for her. My advice to you is to love her as a sister deserves and find a girlfriend for that other love, maybe a high-school senior. But for today, I’ll be satisfied with a promise. Give your word, now, that you won’t have sex with your sister again.” I nodded. “Say it aloud,” he demanded softly.

  I promised it out loud. He pulled out a typed piece of paper from his briefcase which he read, “I, Christian Donald Briner Tappet, swear on this Sunday, July 14, 1974, to refrain from any further intimate contact with my sister, Sally Lynn Tappet.” He passed it to me, and without complaint, doing my duty with honor, I signed it.

  Chapter Seven

  To see Sally, especially on the way to work in
the morning, became excruciatingly painful. In the next weeks, Lloyd and I visited rock clubs in downtown New York City. I saw The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen, Southside Jonny, and many other bands who haven’t become famous. For the first time in my life I smoked weed. Lloyd seemed to always have some and it relieved the stress of the loneliness from not seeing Sally. I saw Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Gordon Lightfoot with Stan and had a very good time. Overall, these events brought me only small comfort compared to the loss I felt. At work, Ralph’s projects on rebuilding appliances remained the highlight of my summer. From the refrigerator to microwave, my reconstruction efforts were all passes. Some of them didn’t look that pretty, but they all worked fairly well. I know Ralph was exceedingly happy, and at the end of August on my last shift, he gave me a hug, and a bonus of one hundred and twenty dollars.

  I asked Mary to switch schools in September when I started grade eleven. The thought of seeing Sally everyday talking to other boys, drove me to depression. She and Stan agreed that this would be best and thought it also wise for me to start working weekends at the Hoboken Office through to Christmas. I knew Sally was as sad as me. Over the Christmas Holidays that year, I traveled to Japan with Mary and Hiroyuki Nakamura. It was my first time there, and one of Mary’s assistants, Barbara Read, showed me around Tokyo and bought me gifts to cheer me up.

  While I was there I read The Silent Cry by Ōe Kenzaburō. Sally stayed at home with Stan and Una. It was a hard Christmas Season, but I saw what they were doing and appreciated it. I seemed to be surviving better than Sally. She’d taken to tantrums, and openly criticized Stan and Mary, even sometimes, me and Una. I’d heard rumors that at school she was being sluttish and smug, one time even lifting up her top to show the basketball team her breasts, but anytime I asked her about it, she’d say, “Unlike yourself, I would never betray you,” or some such hurtful comment.

  “I swore an oath not to sleep with you again,” I answered. “I promised everyone.”

  “You didn’t promise me.”

  Sally’s body was developing, and she began at times, and more and more frequently, to take on a stunning charismatic quality to which everyone alluded when they saw it, a pale exotic look of beguiled teenage beauty, a look of hurt, and of the unreachable height of purity, all mixed with a mature sexuality. Sometimes it was quite captivating.

  We still had moments when we would talk alone together, and our mutual tenderness and affection would reassert itself.

  “You’ve gained a lot of weight,” Sally said to me on the May long weekend of that year. Both Mary and Stan were away. I had taken off my shirt in the spring sun while we opened the pool. It was true, I’d a flabby middle, but I didn’t care.

  “Don’t let yourself go on account of what happened,” she whispered. “I’m feeling better now. I still miss you, but what they made you promise is beginning to make some sense.”

  I nodded. Una brought us out homemade pizzas and juice and sat out in the sun with us. “It’s delightful,” she said cheerfully, “the worst is over and spring has sprung.”

  We agreed and ate with her in the warm sun. “When I first met your parents in 1959,” she said, “I was a speaker at the West Indies Federation Conference. I urged for continuation of Jamaican’s association with the Federation. I felt too much separatism would isolate the island economically. Back then I weighed much less and was much more of a peacock.” We both laughed. “Stan and Mary were on holidays there, but had come to the conference to get a sense of the prospect of the island’s economic stability. Tappets was thinking to build there. After the meeting, they introduced themselves and we sat down and talked at length. I immediately liked them, and being in business in Jamaica, I was acutely aware of its problems. We had a frank discussion.”

  “What does that mean?” Sally asked clumsily.

  She giggled and reached over and kissed Sally on the cheek. “It means that I told them not to build in Jamaica. They visited my Kingston Jerk Shack the next day and we had a wonderful lunch. I spent the rest of their holiday with them. They met my little Peewee, and thought him just fine. On their invitation, I came to visit them that Christmas in Jersey. Your mom was just pregnant with you, Sally, and they were very much in love and happy, working on your bedroom and fixing up the mansion. It was a wonderful visit. After my Sweet Peewee’s funeral, I began demanding justice of the authorities in Jamaica. I sold my home to raise money and moved in with Clara. Often I mentioned your mother and father in my sorrow.

  “One early morning, Clara always rises at dawn, she put out a suspicious fire at her hacienda. It was then, although struggling with English, she phoned Mary and begged her to save me before I was stamped out by gun-toting crews of the dark Jamaica. They’re especially bad in Kingston, where some neighborhoods resemble armed Mafioso camps. Over five hundred gun murders occurred in that city last year.”

  “Mary came down to the island and saw you?” I asked.

  “Both of them came, begging me to leave and work for them in New Jersey. I kissed and hugged them. It was a wonderful gesture, but I couldn’t see myself leaving the island, my sweet Peewee without vengeance and all. Three days later, a bomb blew my car up in front of the Kingston Jerk Shack. I packed up soon after and only returned to sell my businesses or see my mother.”

  Sally and I could hardly speak. The world was a horrible place beyond the borders of the Tappets. Recently in both Jersey and New York City, there had been a sharp rise in murder, kidnapping, rape, and other violent crimes. It was expected that New York City would default on its loans and declare bankruptcy. America was vilified around the world as a society of runaway greed. Guerrilla fighting in El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, had left thousands dead. The Khmer Rouge Communists had taken over Cambodia. The North Vietnamese had taken over the South. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and China, had increased their grip over their citizens. In the Middle East, the situation was horrifying. In Lebanon, the Christians and Muslims openly fought with one another. Thousands were being killed. Just a few weeks ago a Palestinian bomber attacked a Passover crowd of shoppers in Israel and had killed thirteen persons and wounded seventy-two. A survey undertaken of the population of Ireland confirmed it was the most churchgoing place in Christendom, yet Catholic and Protestant continued to kill and terrorize each other. No wonder so many people became Communists.

  I’d a baseball game that afternoon, and Andy and I left at about two o’clock to Pulaski Park. Our team was quite seasoned and our pitcher had a mean fastball. We won an easy victory and when we were shaking hands afterward, I was surprised to spot Mary sitting in the bleachers. How long she’d been there, I had no idea. I came over at once and kissed her on the cheek.

  “What brings you here?” I asked, “I thought you were in the office all day?”

  “You and Andy both played well. I’ll drive you two home, and Christian, you can quickly get changed. We’re going out to supper.”

  I knew something was up and was anxious. This was quite exceptional. “Why is Mom taking me out to supper?” I asked Una.

  “You’ll soon see.”

  I frowned and dressed in dark green cotton pants and a brand-new white turtle neck. I applied bactericidal medicine to my facial pimples and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Again, I’d the impression of a stranger looking back at me. I’d just reached a height of six feet and my blond hair had turned a dirty sandy color. Quite often, it was greasy even though I showered every day, but I knew it was my diet. I looked to my own critical eye, unattractive, but I couldn’t say that I actually cared about it either.

  Mary drove to a restaurant downtown near the lake, Michael’s Tin Island Bar and Tavern, a new large eatery with a separate jazz bar which faced the massive parking lot. A table had been reserved for us on the other side of the restaurant in the back corner, near the glass-doors leading to an unopened patio-deck which looked out on the skyscrapers of New York City and face
d Riverdale Street.

  The tables were covered in white linen. The candles were also white. Clusters of them sat on the large tables, all aflame, and the white walls were hand-painted in thin light cherry-red sketches of famous New York City areas such as the United Nation Buildings, Times Square, and Central Park. The ceiling was also white and the floor was crimson red. Candles burned on the columns as well, and on the mantels above the five fireplaces which were all burning softly. I couldn’t make up my mind if I liked the whole effect, but it was something which certainly caught the eye.

  When we sat, Mary selected dry white wine from France. I agreed to try a glass. The waiter was a tall sturdy man who reminded me of one of my favorite high school teachers. I watched him serve other tables. My marks this year had been exceptional and the Scholastic Assessment Test scores were high as well. Stan thought I would be accepted at any of the eight Ivy League Universities and so I had applied to them all. Unlike many young men, I wasn’t looking for a way out from under the thumbs of my parents. I’d a lot of freedom and was quite happy to go wherever they wished, but my first choice was NYCU. That’s where Sally was going. However they wanted me to go to Princeton and had bribed me by offering me a new car.

  “That would be an hour every day both ways,” I’d said.

  “Much less than that, Christian,” Stan said. He’d answered me with that look he had down pat which meant that I should accept the inevitable.

  My hamburger and her fish Creole on rice were served and we ate in silence. “Is there a reason why we’ve come here?” I asked at length.