Something Beautiful

by Jenna Jones

  Micah pushed his glasses up his nose, straightened his shoulders, and got out of the car and went into the house. His mother, Ivy, was still awake, reading in an armchair. She put the book down and smiled at him. "How was the party?"

  "Good. Tristan and Laird are having a baby."

  "Oh, how lovely. Who are they, again?"

  "The Marcuses. Laird's in cancer research and Tristan's parents own the bookstore Shiloh works at."

  "He's the one who's a great deal older than his wife, isn't he?"

  Micah shrugged. "Five or six years, I think. Tristan's thirty-something. Do we have any ice cream?"

  "There's rocky road in the freezer." She added as Micah went into the kitchen, "Your favorite."

  He smiled as he took the carton from the freezer. "Rocky road is Shiloh's favorite. Mine is mint chocolate chip."

  "Oh. Well, as long as chocolate in involved you're both happy. Micah." She followed him into the kitchen and sat at the bar as he scooped up some ice cream. "There's something I've wanted to talk to you about."

  "Chocolate sauce?" he said.

  "There's Hershey's in the fridge. Micah."

  "I'm listening." There was a can of chocolate syrup behind a jar of mayonnaise. He poured a generous amount onto the ice cream.

  "You're twenty-three now," Ivy said. "You've had quite a few adventures, but it's time to think seriously about your future."

  "I'm very serious about my future," Micah said and sprinkled some extra walnuts on top of the ice cream. "The job at the Chronicle is great, Mom. It's exactly what I'm good at and it's a really good salary."

  "I mean your personal future. Not just your career. We know you've never really been comfortable around girls, but you have to get over that, darling. You have to think about finding a wife."

  Micah swallowed hard and coughed on a partially-chewed bit of almond. "A wife?" he said when he'd stopped coughing.

  "A wife. A mother for your children. It's the next step in life, sweetheart. I wish more of your friends would set an example and get married, but I suppose it's good you see Laird and Tristan's marriage. Being around them makes it seem not so scary, doesn't it?"

  "Um," he said.

  "I hope she doesn't have any brothers," Ivy added, shaking her head. "I can't imagine what her parents would have named them."

  "She only has sisters," Micah said. "Rory and Dallas."

  "You've met them? Are they single?"

  "No, they're both married. Dallas is the one with twins -- I went to the christening, remember?"

  "Oh. Well. Anyway." She dismissed the Rigbys with a shrug. "Do you remember the Harrises? Bill and Sharon?"

  "Vaguely." Mostly he remembered a tall man with a deep, not-often used voice and a tiny woman who always sang "O Holy Night" at the Christmas service with lots of vibrato.

  "Their daughter, Bonnie, is done with school and has just started working at one of those Internet companies. She likes computers, too. You're taking her out Friday night."

  It was a good thing he had nothing left to choke on -- this definitely would have killed him. "I was going to spend the weekend in the city, looking at apartments."

  "You can do that Saturday. Friday night, you're taking out Bonnie. Maybe you'll hit it off. Maybe you'll like each other. Maybe you'll date."

  He looked unhappily at the bowl of ice cream. "Maybe," he said faintly.

  "If you're not going to eat that, put it back in the freezer, please."

  "Okay."

  His mother came to him and held his chin gently in her fingers. "It's better to marry than to burn, darling," she said. "Remember that."

  "I remember," Micah said, and she smiled and kissed his forehead and started up the stairs. "Mom?" he said, and Ivy turned around.

  "What, darling?"

  "Do you ever miss Rebecca?"

  Her smile disappeared and her face went pale. She turned and went quickly up the stairs.

  I guess not, Micah thought and took the ice cream to his room. He turned on his computer, eating ice cream while it booted up, and opened his email program. He usually deleted emails from unfamiliar addresses without opening them, but one caught his eye: the address was "rweaver" and the subject line was "Hey, mini-bro."

  He heart pounded a little harder as he opened the email.

  Micah --

  I know it's been forever. It's taken me that long to stop being angry at the parents and to work up the courage to talk to you again. I miss you like crazy, and Shiloh said you wanted to hear from me. So here I am.

  I don't know what she's told you, so here's my life: still married to Justin, despite all the dire predictions. We just had a baby girl. Her name is Katherine and we're calling her Kitty. I'm attaching a picture. She's got Mom's eyes.

  Justin got a job teaching at UC Santa Cruz and we moved down over the summer. It's amazing here: so casual and simple. It's a lot like Seattle, really, but with a lot less rain.

  I miss you. I want Kitty to know her uncle. Maybe someday her grandparents, but we'll see how that all works out. I'm not going to hope for too much from them.

  Anyway. I love you. Answer me when you're ready.

  Love,

  Rebecca

  Micah opened the picture Rebecca had sent. It was a plump-faced baby, with big blue eyes like his mother and Shiloh and himself, a tight cap of dark hair, freckles across her nose and a wide, toothless smile. Micah smiled, biting his thumbnail, and then hit the Reply button. He typed fast: Of course I miss you. Kitty's beautiful. I want to see you as soon as possible. Love, me, included his cell phone number and his work number, and hit Send before he could think about it any further.

  It was a common enough story, he supposed, for a preacher's daughter to go wild: sneaking out of the house, drinking, drugs, stealing from Ivy's purse as well as Micah's allowance, coming home reeking of marijuana smoke and beer, screaming fights at two in the morning. Finally, their parents had enough, and shipped Rebecca off to Seattle to live with a childless aunt and uncle, and attend college under their supervision.

  The weekly bulletins from their aunt hadn't been hopeful: more fights, more stealing, more drug use. Rebecca wouldn't go to church or even to school. And then quite abruptly: "Rebecca has run away and gotten married."

  His parents never spoke her name, her pictures were put away, and their other children were forbidden to contact her.

  Micah had been only sixteen at the time and missed his sister dreadfully. There had been times he'd been afraid of her, times he'd hated her -- when she was stoned she'd been terrifying, she would punch him, slap him, twist his arm behind his back -- but when she was sober he'd never felt closer to anyone. He'd almost told her he thought he might be gay more than once, but lost his nerve each time.

  Shiloh had said Rebecca had read his blog -- his trip would give them something to talk about until they were comfortable again. And there would be the baby, and he'd want to hear about Justin: Aunt Olivia had had nothing good to say about him. Micah didn't even know how they had met or where they'd gotten married or what he did for a living aside from Aunt Olivia's disapproving, "He teaches pop psychology."

  The email sounded like the Rebecca he'd loved and the Rebecca he missed, and he wanted to see her again, hear her voice, meet her daughter.

  He opened up his blogging program and typed up an entry.

  Family. It's a weird word, don't you think? It can mean so many things. Mostly to me it means understanding, simpatico like they say in Spanish, deep understanding that doesn't need words.

  There are a lot of people that I love. There's my blood family, my mom and dad and sisters, and there's other people I consider my family in ways I don't know how to explain. There are a lot of people that I don't want any harm to come to them. And then there are the people who are simpatico to me, who love me because they love me and don't need another reason.

  I'm happy today. There are more of them than I realized.

  He read it over -- Jamie complained he was a terrible
speller, but he was getting better -- posted it, and turned off the computer.

  He'd see Dune at lunch tomorrow. He could tell him about Rebecca then -- and Bonnie, oh Lord, about Bonnie -- and Dune would tell him the right thing to do.

  Chapter Six

  Micah had interned with the IT department at the paper during college. He'd gotten the job through Dune, sort of -- Dune had told him about it before it was posted publicly anywhere, and the hiring manager liked Micah right away and hired him as soon as she was able.

  He loved it at the Chronicle: he'd never been interested in journalism, but the atmosphere was always so exciting, abuzz with activity and importance. It wasn't quite like working at Virtuoso, the video game company that had employed him right out of high school: the atmosphere there had always been busy, too, but in a different way as they tried to reach their deadlines under budget and on time. There had always been a slight aura of panic at Virtuoso -- which made sense in hindsight, he supposed, since the company folded after only five years.

  At the Chronicle, on the other hand, while IT was important it wasn't the center of the enterprise, and while it was a high-pressure job he didn't feel like the paper's survival depended on him and the rest of the IT team. He fixed email programs, monitored the servers, updated the websites, hooked up printers, explained in small words why you shouldn't open every attachment your buddy sends you -- participated, he felt, in a team effort.

  And now he would be doing it as a full-time employee. Life felt very, very good.

  He went to the same cubicle in the IT room that he'd had all during his internship to find a "Welcome home!" sign taped to his monitor, balloons on his desk and printouts of every picture he'd sent to the department pinned to his bulletin board. He smiled and called out, "Thanks, guys!" as he took off his satchel.

  "Any time! Welcome back!" Anthony called back to him, or maybe it was Freddy, but no matter, Micah was back in IT and all was well with the world.

  He spent most of the morning deleting three months' worth of email and catching up on the various crises that had occurred while he was gone. Abby from HR came down to have him sign some papers to make him an official full-time employee, and people came from other departments to welcome him back and hear about the trip.

  Dune appeared at his cubicle just before lunch time, looking lean and lovely, and announced, "Time for your celebratory lunch."

  "Hi, Dunie," Micah said. "Five minutes to finish this email and then I'm all yours."

  "Okay." Dune leaned against his desk, watching him type -- and then reached over and started playing with his hair.

  Micah tolerated it for as long a he could. "What?" he said as he shook out his head.

  "You still need a haircut. Do you want the name of my barber?"

  "I know the name of your barber -- I just need to find the time to make an appointment." He hit Send and put his IM on Away. "Okay. I'm ready. Where are we going?"

  "That depends on what you're in the mood for. Sushi? Italian? Steak? Happy Meal?"

  Micah made a face at Dune as he settled his satchel on his back. "We'll get Happy Meals only if I get your toy, too."

  Dune laughed and slung an arm over his shoulders. "You can have all my toys, Micah, my love."

  They left the newspaper building and walked down the street for a while, Micah comfortable under Dune's arm. It was cool and windy out, and the crowded streets smelled salty and familiar.

  "I love this city so much," Micah said softly.

  Dune smiled at him. "More than Paris? More than Madrid?"

  "Paris and Madrid are both beautiful," Micah said. "But this is home." They passed a homeless man, sitting in the sun with his back against a building and his eyes closed, and Micah put a few dollars into the tattered cap in front of him. "Take care, sir," he said softly, and he and Dune walked on.

  "I usually give directly to the shelters," Dune remarked.

  "Yeah, but sometimes they don't want to go to the shelters." He leaned his head against Dune's shoulder. "There were so many runaways in London. Kids, young kids, begging for change."

  "It's the case in most big cities."

  "I know, but don't you ever want to ask them if there's nowhere they can go?"

  "For most runaways, no, there isn't. I don't think most kids run away from home because they're having a bad day -- they run because it's a really intolerable situation and everyone around them has let them down."

  "I suppose," Micah muttered. "My sister Rebecca used to take off for days when she was a teenager and not tell anyone where she'd been. I -- I like to give because I know people helped her. You know?"

  "Yeah," Dune said gently and rubbed his shoulder. "I know."

  "She emailed me yesterday," Micah blurted. "The first time she's wanted to talk to me in seven years."

  "That's good news, isn't it?"

  "It's really good news. She's been talking to Shiloh for a while, too. She's married, and they just had a baby, and she and her husband have moved to Santa Cruz."

  Dune was still smiling at him, and he paused in front of a Chinese restaurant. "Does this look good to you?"

  "Yes -- I think I want pot stickers." They went into the restaurant and were seated, and once they'd ordered Micah said, "But I don't know how to tell my parents about her."

  "You don't know how to tell your parents about much, sweetie," Dune said gently, and Micah scowled.

  "I'm working on it. This is a little more immediate." He remembered the Bonnie situation and sighed. "Or not. The point is, Rebecca wants her family back and her family wants her back and -- and -- there has to be something we can do to make it right again."

  "What happened, exactly?" said Dune, so Micah explained it: the drug use and the drinking and the violence and Rebecca's anger and his parents' final admission of defeat.

  "And then Aunt Olivia called to say she had run away and gotten married. I don't know much about him: his name is Justin Weaver and he used to teach at a place called Bastyr and he's teaching at UC Santa Cruz now. I don't know how they met or anything, but she sounded happy in her email."

  Dune nodded slowly. Their food had come while Micah talked, and Dune was slowly sipping won ton soup as he thought. "It sounds like there's a lot of forgiveness needed, on their side and hers. Did you ever find out what caused her to act out like that?"

  "No. I always thought she just got sick of all the rules."

  "Well...sometimes if a kid is abused they'll lash out the way she did. It's a kind of self-medication."

  Micah shook his head. "No. My dad would never -- no."

  "Maybe it was somebody else at the church or somebody at school."

  "She never said anything about it to me, if anything did happen. She would have told my parents if something had, I know it."

  "But if they didn't believe her she'd have every reason to hate them."

  "Rebecca was the most honest person I ever knew," Micah said, frowning. "Before all that started, at least. They wouldn't have any reason to think she was lying. She didn't make stuff up. Even when she was stealing stuff she'd admit it if they asked."

  "Well," said Dune with a sigh. "It's something to ask her about later, I suppose."

  "Yeah. And if she doesn't have an answer -- I mean, it's not like I can point to anything and say 'This made me gay.' I was just born."

  "Some people are born angry, too," Dune said gently. "Sometimes they suppress it for a long time, and when they finally let it out they let it out in a big way."

  "Yeah," Micah muttered. He dipped a pot sticker into sweet-and-sour sauce and popped it into his mouth. "She was so much fun when we were growing up. She'd make up the best games and we'd go exploring on our bikes and she never told me to go away because I was too little."

  "She sounds wonderful, Micah."

  "She was. She is. God, I miss her."

  "Well, you're about to get her back," Dune pointed out. "And you'll find a way to tell your folks -- though, as always, I think the best way is the dir
ect way: 'Mom, Dad, I want Rebecca back in my life.' Just like how you'll say, 'Mom, Dad, I'm not into girls, I like men.'"

  Micah felt himself blush and concentrated on getting the chopsticks right to eat some rice.

  "Micah, what's happened?" said Dune with a sigh.

  "They've fixed me up on a date Friday night. Her name is Bonnie Harris. Her parents go to my dad's church." He made an incredulous face. "My mom actually said, 'She likes computers, too.' Like that's something to build a relationship on."