by Sydney Avey
That Danny showed interest in the priesthood surprised all of us, but Alaya’s family is deeply Roman Catholic. I suppose many young men who have a passionate nature are drawn to religious life. How easily I accept Mike’s calling, but I would not be happy if Danny had answered that same call. Something inside of me yearns for nothing more than to see little Dannys and Valeries come along. That could have happened for Mike, if it had worked out that way, but marriage is forbidden to the Roman Catholic priests. I make no apologies for my prejudice.
On Christmas Eve, the young people attend mass at Saint Nicholas. Andy is a lapsed Catholic and Valerie is just confused. That’s my fault. I didn’t raise her in any faith. I am still working out my own faith. Roger believes that all good people go to Heaven. That he is one of the good guys I am sure. That his theology holds water I am no longer so sure.
For a family that has spent money in such a hedonistic way furnishing this house, we are surprisingly frugal with gift-giving. Our joy is in being together.
On Christmas night, as I relax by the tree, a glow fills my eyes like bubbles rising in the glass I cradle in my hand. Warm tears blur my vision, sting, and release a flood of desperation. When Roger returns from his walk with Goldie, he finds me sitting in my white leather chair in our bedroom, sobbing into my owl pillow for my sister. Here I sit, safe and warm, enjoying the company of my beautiful daughter and Alaya’s precious son. A world away, Alaya and Elazar sit alone in their ancient farmhouse kitchen. One son is in jail. The other, I truly believe, will not be going home any time soon, if ever.
Band of Bullies
Band of Bullies
Danny came to us on a one-way ticket. His visa allows him to stay for a year. I want to ask him about his plans, but Roger thinks we should let him take time to weigh his options. Although Alaya sends him money, he jumped at the chance to do a little courier service and under-the-table clerking for Andy. My son-in-law was very pleased that Danny came to us with an international driver’s license.
When he’s not working for Andy, Danny tinkers in the garage with Roger on Valerie’s long list of home improvement projects. Growing up in a household sustained by numerous agricultural enterprises, Danny is handy with tools. Andy thinks Danny won’t have a problem finding a job that allows him to get a work permit. After that, who knows?
What Danny really loves, though, is to pick up his guitar and strum it for hours. The garage has good acoustics, he says. When Danny picks up his guitar, Roger pulls down the garage door. We are growing more sensitive to the neighbors’ complaints, which come to us in bits of conversation that float over the hedge; anonymous letters with paragraphs of grievances (poorly spelled I might add); and official notices about city council meetings that are reviewing building codes and zoning laws to make sure that all new construction (their words) meets yet-to-be-determined standards (my words).
What really got my hackles up was the morning I discovered a warm pile of dog poop carefully wrapped in my newspaper. It can’t possibly be Goldie’s. She does her business in our yard, and anyway, when we walk her we take a small shovel.
Andy and Valerie sit at city council meetings and listen for hours to discussions about how many unrelated people should be allowed to live in a household, how many cars can park on the street and for how long. They discourage me from coming with them because I can’t hide my outrage. Andy tells me not to take it personally, that these are growing pains. Longtime residents want to keep their chickens and rabbits and pretend they live in the country. A modernistic house signals change.
I sometimes wonder why Valerie didn’t just sell our burned-out lot and go buy an existing home in one of the new neighborhoods where these houses are springing up everywhere. Eichler didn’t build many custom homes. Andy laughs and says it’s her pioneer spirit. He thinks we can win over the neighbors if we are patient. I’m not so sure. Gunther Dold, Carlo Santorini and their lackey, Councilman Walter Schwartz, are a formidable team. Gunther is loud; Carlo is mean; and Walter is a politician.
This afternoon, Roger and Danny have the garage door up while they install some insulation that will muffle the noise of Roger’s band saw and the used electric guitar Danny has just purchased. They don’t hear Walter’s black Lincoln town car pull up in front of the house.
I come around from the side patio just in time to see Walter walking up the driveway with a tall, tow-headed young man who is attractive, but alarmingly thin. This must be Scott, the boy Ivy has told me about. Scott is a weedy kid; he even smells faintly of weed. No surprise there; Ivy is not a gossip, but she has mentioned that Walter’s son seems to be out of school a lot, hanging around in the park.
Walter raises his hand to acknowledge me, but the two make a beeline to the garage where the men are. I follow behind them. I want to know why they are here. Roger looks up, and Walter sticks his hand out.
“Walter Schwartz.”
Roger wipes a dusty hand on his shirt and gives Walter’s hand a brief shake. Scott reaches past his father and puts his hand out to Roger. I hang back and take a good look at this young man. He has deep-set, ice-blue eyes and a chiseled jaw. He blinks excessively, as if the bright winter sun pouring into the garage hurts his eyes. The only warmth in this boy is the gap-toothed smile he flashes in a calculated sort of way. His smile comes on like a traffic light that signals go. When it clicks off, his face goes dark. It has the effect of a burned out yellow warning light. This is a complicated young man.
Walter ignores me and engages Roger in a conversation about traffic on the street, while Scott wanders over to Danny’s collection of guitar equipment in the corner.
“Hey man, a Hardtail Strat. Nice.” Scott picks up Danny’s guitar, spins it around, and drops it down on his hip.
“Do you play?” Danny walks over to Scott, who returns the guitar to its stand.
“Nah, not the guitar. I’m Scott,” he thrusts out his hand. His smile flashes on and sticks there on his face.
“I’m Danny. This is my Aunt Dee.” Danny motions for me to join them. Scott’s smile loses some wattage, but he offers me his hand in a respectful way.
“So where are you from, Danny?”
“I’m from Navarra.”
“Never heard of it. That’s...where?”
That’s a discussion Danny doesn’t want to get into. Unless people live near one of the areas where the Basques immigrated, Bakersfield, Reno, Boise, New York, they won’t be familiar with this tiny territory and its continual fight for autonomy. Navarra is a region of the Basque Country that spreads across the border between Spain and France.
“It’s near the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain.” He lets it go at that.
The boys begin to discuss music, and I continue to look at Scott. I’ve actually seen him at Mike’s T-Group meetings. Mike started holding these meetings in our living room in early January after he returned from Chicago. Between eight and twelve young men generally show up. Valerie was still fussing over how to accommodate them all in the living room when Mike brought over a dozen folding metal chairs he pulled out of Saint Matthew’s before the city boarded it up. It seems to be working out pretty well.
On the nights the group meets, I go to my studio and reorganize my art supplies. Valerie, still on a part-time teaching schedule, has set aside her decorating projects and started writing again. She retreats to the small desk she refinished and installed in a corner of the hobby room. Roger and Andy take themselves off to The Echo to schmooze with the locals.
Only Puffy seems put out. She has chosen Valerie’s hobby room as her winter retreat, where a basket of fabric she can burrow in still sits on the coral daybed. She doesn’t like the invader Valerie darting about in her room, so she wanders through the house, meowing loudly. I coax her into my studio and plop her into a cat bed I’ve set up on top of the credenza that hides the assortment of “finds” I’m working with. She’s too fat to jump down, so she gives up and snuggles in for an after dinner, before bedtime nap. It is the T-Group meeti
ngs Walter wants to discuss with Roger.
“I wanted to come by and talk to you about the traffic problem your weekly gatherings are causing.” Walter has moved so close to Roger that Roger looks like he’s pinned between the councilman in his face and the workbench behind him.
Roger reaches back to pick up a file and a door handle he has been retooling and brings the project between them. He begins to draw the small rasp across a rough part of the metal.
“What traffic problems?” Roger works something loose. “Ah, got it!” He holds the handle up for Walter to inspect.
“Very nice.” Walter draws back, shifting his body to balance his weight on both feet. “People tell me you are attracting a rather large crowd of young people every week. They park up and down the street, make noise and drop trash. Don’t you think it would be better if they met at the Youth Center or the Community Hall?”
“Father Mike has tried to get his group on the schedule at both those places. He’s always been told the schedule is full.” Roger blows metal filaments away from the area he has been filing.
“Ah, well, I imagine that’s true. Then too, the way kids act these days, the Centers might be afraid of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Vandalism, drinking, you know, that sort of thing.”
“Has that been a problem with the pick-up basketball game that meets in the Center gymnasium every week? Or any of the other youth meetings?”
“Well, no, but these are different kinds of kids.”
“Different, how?”
Walter begins to lose patience. “Nobody’s quite sure what the good Father is doing with those kids. What is it, some kind of political action meeting?”
“Your own son comes once in a while. Ask him what he’s doing here.”
“He says leadership training. That sounds political to me.”
Roger sighs.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. It bugs your neighbors. Their friends can’t park on the street the nights you hold those meetings.”
“Okay, we’ll see what we can do about that. We can probably get the kids to carpool.”
“And, they wonder what a bunch of boys sitting around in a circle talking are up to. Looks like a cell meeting of some kind. You know, with these glass walls, your neighbors see pretty much everything you do.”
“Only if they stand in the street and stare through the front window.”
“Okay Roger, obviously I can’t make any progress with you. These kids are not boy scouts. You know that. I know that. And your neighbors know that. They’re the problem kids.”
Roger tries to suppress a smile. “And your son is one of them.”
“Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Roger takes a step toward Walter. “Warn me about what?”
Walter backs away and gestures for Scott. “C’mon Scott, we have to go.” Addressing me for the first time, he says, “Nice to see you, Mrs. Carter.”
“I’m Mrs. Russell now, but you may call me Dee, Councilman.” I say this with wide-eyed warmth, but we both know he’ll never get my vote.
Scott hesitates to follow his father just long enough to make the moment awkward. Then he smiles broadly at Danny.
“Good to meet you, Danny. I’ll bring my drums over one of these days and we can jam.”
Scott makes good on his word. Soon enough he and his drum set are permanent fixtures in our garage.
R
I’m walking Goldie when I spot Laura in front of her house, unloading groceries from her car. I let Goldie off her leash and the retriever bounds full speed for her mistress. Laura laughs and pulls Goldie’s ears.
“I was just about to call and let you know I was home.” Her voice carries on the winter wind that blows debris in circles around the street. I walk up the street, past the violet-purple, netted iris starting to push through the cold ground. They always surprise me with their early arrival. Time seems to move so fast these days.
“I’m going to miss Goldie. She’s a good companion.”
“Yes she is,” Laura ruffles her pet’s soft head. “You will just have to come over and visit us a lot.”
I grab a bag of groceries and follow Laura into the house. Inside, the heater blows noisily, trying to heat a house that had been cold for close to a month. My nose starts to run. We slip off our warm winter coats, and I make a pot of tea while Laura put her groceries away.
“How was your visit?”
“You know, not bad; good, actually.” We wrap our hands around the tea mugs to warm them up. “My folks have really mellowed. I didn’t exactly tell them I don’t plan to move back, but I did say that I have a lot to do here, with the house and all, and they said they understood. We just had a nice visit. They talked about Fred when we were growing up together. They told stories about what they remembered about him when we were young, before his accident. They didn’t say anything about how he changed. It’s almost like he stopped living when we moved to California. I guess for them, he did.”
“Did that bother you?”
“It actually didn’t. It helped me realize that there was more to Fred than his sickness. I don’t have to remember that part. He’s healed now. He’s in Heaven with Jesus.”
I wonder if that’s true. I have to believe that God doesn’t send people to Hell because they are too sick to go on living and too weak to wait out their days. Jesus is all about love and forgiveness. Still, I know from all the time I have spent with Father Mike and from reading the Bible for myself that we have choices about where we spend eternity.
We finish our tea and I catch Laura up on my busy household.
“It feels like Noah’s Ark. We’re takin’ ‘em on two by two. David arrives in the spring.”
“Good thing you have such a big house.”
“It is fun having the young people around.” Well, most of them. Scott gives me the willies. “But we’re attracting a lot of unwanted attention.”
I tell Laura about Walter’s threats.
“Have you told Mike? Maybe he should move the meetings.”
“I haven’t told him, and I don’t want you to either. I’m not letting this little band of bullies get their way.”
“That’s big talk for a little lady,” Laura says in her best John Wayne impersonation. “But seriously, be careful Dee. You have a lot of glass in that house. I’d hate to think of what might happen if someone ever decides to throw more than words at you.”
Getting the Message
Getting the Message
The five of us have just returned from seeing Children of the Damned. Andy rouses Valerie, who has fallen asleep. How can she sleep after that film’s shocking end? My heart is still thumping. She rests her head on Andy’s shoulder while they walk up to the house. Roger hotfoots ahead of them to unlock the front door, and Danny and I lag behind, discussing what we’ve just seen.
“Did you like the movie, Aunt Dee?”
“I can’t say I liked it. It disturbed me to watch those children be killed. The message was chilling.”
“I guess I try not to look for messages in sci-fi. What did you think it meant?”
“That people kill what they can’t accept.”
“Hmmm. Why do you think they couldn’t accept that the children might not be bad, just different?”
“I don’t know, Danny. Why did we kill Christ? He offered us something good, but we couldn’t get past the challenge to be different. If I understood why people are so dead set against what looks different, I might understand what’s behind our neighbors’ opposition to everything we do.”
My teeth are chattering now. Either the temperature is dropping fast or a part of me is still on screen, huddled in a church with the children, divining what is about to happen next. Danny throws a wool-coated arm around my shoulders and gives me a quick hug.
“You think too much, Aunt Dee.”
We walk into the house in a sleepy group. A full moon glows through the atrium glass. The accent pieces Val
erie has placed around the house receive a lunar blessing that unites them in a common purpose. The ceramic container of ornamental grass where Puffy pots herself when she’s sleepy; the acrylic landscape of the Bay of Biscay hanging over the fireplace; the Murano chandelier of teal-tipped, amber glass flowers. All these grace us and fill us with peace.
Danny walks into his room and flips on the light. I hear his voice echo down the hall. “Guys, you better come see this.”
One by one, we gather in the doorway of the front bedroom. Someone has shot a bullet into our front window! We gawk at the shattered glass.
“How could this have happened?”
Valerie is fully awake now. She starts toward the window, but Andy moves to block her approach. As he does so, I flash back to the moment I knew that the shadow I saw in Laura’s Sycamore was Fred and the similar movement to stop Laura, to protect her from seeing what I saw.
Roger goes straight to the window and puts a finger on the angry hole in the center of the cracked glass. His head swivels from wall to wall. Seeing nothing, he returns his attention to the window.
“This was done with a pellet gun, I’d say.”
Valerie sits down on the bed and Andy joins Roger in front of the window.
“Best not to touch it, Roger. We’ll ask the police to dust for fingerprints when they come out to make a report.”
“I don’t think they’ll find any.” Roger removes his finger from the bullet hole.
“Do you think whoever did this was inside the house?” Valerie clutches her stomach. “Did someone try to shoot out the window from the inside?”
“No, honey.” Andy moves to her side. “The shooter most likely stood at the top of the driveway, or maybe in the middle, and took a shot at the window from outside. I don’t think he went anywhere near the house. If he had been closer, the pellet probably would have gone through the window. We’d find it lodged somewhere in the wall.”
Roger nods in agreement. “We might be able to find the pellet on the ground in the morning to confirm that’s what it was. Or, we might never find it.”