My Furry Valentine

by Karen Ranney

  I knew my father was audacious in a great many ways, an example being this family gathering tonight. I’d never thought that he would do something like this, proudly proclaim that the Boyds were stewards of the Stone of Scone. I’d never noticed it before. Before he’d told me the story I would have remained as ignorant as I had been as a child, racing off to my life, annoyed because the door was so heavy and cumbersome.

  I wondered if Austin knew about the Stone. Or any of my other soon to be greeted relatives. Did my mother know?

  What other secrets did my father have? Every time we met lately, he divulged something new. My impression of him was morphing with every encounter. He was no longer the strict disciplinarian of my youth. He was revealing himself to be a great deal more complicated than that.

  Was my mother the same?

  I guess I was going to find out soon.

  Instead of opening the door, I pressed the buzzer to the right, stood there and waited to be greeted like a stranger.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I excused myself before I died of boredom

  My father greeted me at the door and surprised me with a hug. Although I’d wanted to visit with my mother first, I was swept into the family room and introduced to my twin half-brothers from Houston.

  Twins were unusual in the Furry community. It probably had something to do with our DNA. At least they were fraternal twins and not identical. Nor were their names similar, like Rob and Bob, thank heavens. They had normal names: Michael and Douglas. I wasn’t the least surprised when they didn’t go by shortened versions of their names. Mike and Doug just didn’t fit them.

  My brothers — and it might take a little while to get used to that label — were absolutely charming.

  Michael was the taller of the two, but only by an inch or so. His features reminded me more of our father than Douglas did. They both had dark auburn hair and distinctive green eyes. They smiled a lot and seemed comfortable given the circumstances. They stood when I entered the room and — most importantly — didn’t presume to hug me before I was ready.

  However, five minutes into our acquaintance I decided that I would gladly trade Michael and Douglas for Austin any day.

  I also had a half-sister, Dominique, who proved to be a pompous pain in the ass. She was from Dallas and must work for the Chamber of Commerce there because in the first five minutes of meeting me she proceeded to tell me how very small and provincial she thought San Antonio was in comparison to her city. This was based on — her words — her limited association with the natives and the culture, such as it was.

  I refrained from rolling my eyes, but it was a close call.

  Sandy, however, glommed on to Dominique and the two of them talked at some length about shopping in New York.

  I excused myself before I died of boredom.

  My mother was nowhere in sight. Nor were my father’s concubines. I wasn’t sure about the etiquette involved in greeting them, other than the respect due my elders.

  I wanted to know how my mother was doing, but I couldn’t pull Sandy into a corner and ask. Nor was I going to broach that particular subject with my father. He was talking to a man I didn’t know. Since this was supposed to be a family meeting, I assumed he was a member of either the Dallas or Houston family.

  Austin wasn’t in the room, either. If he had been a different kind of person, I might’ve made the assumption that Austin was with our mother, comforting her, perhaps. Or advising her how to handle the rest of this meeting. Austin, however, was only concerned about one person — Austin. At least his girlfriend wasn’t here. She’d been instrumental in helping him try to drain me dry and I wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy about her.

  I had the fleeting thought that maybe my mother was with the concubines — and I had to come up with a different name to call them. Maybe she was showing them the rest of the house. My mother didn’t gloat, so if she was doing the tour it was probably my father’s idea.

  When my mother talked to people, especially strangers, she rarely mentioned herself. She always asked questions about them. Were they native to San Antonio? Had they been in the area long? Did they have children in school? Were they working outside the home? Did they know about the new market on Canton Street? She invariably wanted to know if she could be of help in any way.

  If the stranger was a Furry, my mother offered names and phone numbers of people who could be of assistance, including her own. If they weren’t of the Furry persuasion, they still left feeling as if they’d made a new friend.

  Therefore, I wasn’t all that surprised to find my mother on the second floor, in the study she’d redecorated for herself, accompanied by two women.

  My first thought was that my father had excellent taste. Both of the women, the blonde and the redhead, were gorgeous. They had faces that had begun to fade from the first blush of youth, but they would be attractive even in their nineties due to good bone structure and probably a dedicated regime of physical fitness.

  The redhead had green eyes and I immediately pegged her to be the mother of the twins. The blonde looked me up and down with an expression not unlike her daughter’s.

  I was instantly inclined to like the redhead and to give the blonde as little time as was politely possible.

  My mother looked up as I entered the room.

  She was sitting with her legs crossed at the ankles and off to the side, her hands, one atop the other, on her lap. The perfect model’s pose. Her face was composed, her eyes giving nothing away, but the smile was one I had seen all my life. It was the “wife of the alpha” smile, the head of the PTA smile, the welcoming committee smile — a thoroughly polite yet empty expression.

  My heart went out to her. I don’t know what my father was going to do, but I didn’t think I was going to like it. The families had never met. The children had never been introduced to each other. The women had never been in the same room together. I didn’t like that feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was going to happen and it wasn’t going to be good.

  “My daughter, Torrance,” my mother said, introducing me to the other women.

  I nodded, totally missing their names, and turned to my mother when she was finished.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but can I speak to you for a moment?”

  She looked at me and then at the other two women, and then back to me. I hoped she knew that I wouldn’t interrupt her unless it was important.

  Evidently she did, because she stood and excused herself. I backed out of the doorway. She nodded at me and led the way to my parents’ bedroom.

  The suite took up most of the second floor and was comprised of a small office for my father when the downstairs library was just too far away. My parents had separate dressing rooms and bathrooms. My mother had once told me that she thought that separate bathrooms were the key to a lasting marriage.

  I certainly had enough at Graystone. I could give my husband a separate floor, for that matter.

  As large as my parents’ house was, Graystone dwarfed it. I’d wondered, when Sonny had left the house to me instead of to my father, if my mother had resented that fact. It would have meant, of course, relocating the entire family to Graystone, but it was in a hoity-toity zip code. People paid a fortune for houses that were little more than cottages just to say they lived there.

  I’d never asked and she’d never said anything that led me to believe she had wished things were different.

  I followed her to the sitting area off the bedroom. Carol and her team of silent, almost invisible workers, kept the house spotless. Here there was only one book on the end table to indicate that anyone ever used the space. I sat on one of the white wing chairs while my mother took the other.

  Everything in the bedroom was upholstered in white. The carpet was a very pale yellow, but in the sunlight it looked almost white, too. Botanical specimens framed in gold dotted the pale yellow walls. It was a restful and serene space, dominated by a white comforter covered bed that l
ooked at least one and a half times bigger than a California king.

  My mother arranged herself in the same model’s pose and looked at me. This time, however, there was some emotion in her eyes. I was trying to figure out what I was seeing. I thought it was worry, maybe reluctance. Maybe she didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Maybe she already suspected. Had Austin gotten to her before I could?

  “You know,” she said.

  “Know what?”

  She shook her head. “Please, Torrance. You are my dearest daughter. Let’s not have any lies between us. Your father’s told you, hasn’t he?”

  “Told me what?”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about but I was more than willing to discuss whatever she had on her mind. Anything other than telling her the truth.

  She studied me for a moment. I’d gotten that third-degree look before, but I’d been sixteen years old and guilty of some infraction or another. I’d either stayed out too late or told a lie or been somewhere I shouldn’t have been or not been somewhere I should have been. Who can remember years of screw ups?

  “You don’t know, then,” she said.

  She glanced down at her hands, the earlier pose forgotten. Now her fingers were interlaced and she was gripping her hands together tightly.

  I wondered if she was talking about the reason for the family meeting. Call me a coward, but I really didn’t want to ask. I was just fine not being my mother’s confidante.

  A thought occurred to me, one so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly be true. But I’d already given up any notion of normalcy so I went ahead and asked.

  “He isn’t thinking that you’re all going to move in together, is he?”

  There was only one situation that might’ve prompted that action: Hamish had lost all his money and couldn’t support his families in three separate locations. Granted, merging families had not often been done, but there was precedent for it.

  “Is that what you think?”

  Okay, that wasn’t an answer. That was a question answering my question. She had learned something from being married to an attorney all these years.

  My mother had grown up in South Carolina, but her mother was a Chicagoan who didn’t see any value in having southern charm or manners. So my mother was a curious hybrid, someone who was capable of giving you the truth right between the eyes, but often did so with exquisite politeness.

  I expected her to do the same now, but she only steadily returned my look. I knew, without a doubt, that she wasn’t going to say anything further.

  That meant that the ball was in my court.

  Oh, I so didn’t want to go there, so I opted for the coward’s way out.

  “The fire only damaged a few rooms,” I said.

  She frowned at me.

  “Your father told me. Is that why you wished to speak to me?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re more than welcome to stay here, Torrance, until the repairs are made, but your father said you didn’t wish to do so.”

  I shook my head again.

  “You’ve heard of the lottery,” I said. Why warm up to the subject? Let’s just jump right in. “You know, the Pranic lottery?”

  It was her turn to nod.

  “Well, I entered it.”

  “Why would you do something like that, Torrance?”

  Because I wanted to be anything other than I was. Some truths, however, needed to be eased into, not delivered with a slap.

  She sat up straighter, almost in a military pose. Her smile was barely there, a warning to me to take this revelation one tiny step at a time.

  “Why, Torrance?”

  I didn't know how to answer her. I had wanted to be able to master my Furry-ness, not be at the mercy of it. I didn't want someone like Craig Palmer to be able to sway me to do something I knew was ultimately bad for me. I wanted to be able to protect myself, because I discovered that if you didn’t fit in you were vulnerable.

  I wanted to be safe.

  How the hell did I tell that to my mother?

  I didn’t have a child, but I wanted one, maybe two, some day. I knew, without being told, that I would feel an overwhelming desire to shield my child from any dangers. I would stand between them and the world, if necessary.

  My mother felt the same about me. I knew, in that moment, that there was nothing I could say to help her understand and in trying to explain it to her I would hurt her in the worst way imaginable. I would be telling her in so many words that she hadn't protected me, that she hadn't done enough.

  How could I do that?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  One vodka martini coming up

  I was trying to figure out how to stand up and walk away since I’d decided that I couldn’t tell my mother anything.

  However, I’d underestimated her.

  “You’ve already had the transfusion,” she said.

  Her expression didn’t change. Nor did her demeanor. Yet I had the feeling that anger was bubbling up inside her. I don’t think I’d ever heard my mother raise her voice to anyone. When she was disappointed, her voice dropped almost to a whisper. You had to strain to hear it.

  Then, very calmly, she would say something that made you realize that you had hurt her. I never wanted to hurt my mother.

  I nodded. I didn’t think I could speak at that moment.

  “You changed yourself,” she said.

  Once more, I nodded. It was a little more complex than that, but that was basically the situation.

  She didn’t speak for a good two minutes after that. Her attention was on her knees, her eyes focused on them as if they could speak, give her some wisdom, and help her formulate the next words.

  I have to say that those two minutes were the most uncomfortable that I’d spent in a great many years. I think the last time had been when Sonny was yelling at me. We might have loved each other deeply, but that didn’t mean we always got along.

  Sonny could shout and had. She’d given me the freedom to respond in kind. Sometimes, Graystone echoed with our fights, at least until I’d realized she was ill. Then, no matter what Sonny said, I refused to argue with her.

  I’d never felt as free with my mother.

  “Does your father know? Have you already told him?”

  I felt like I was balancing on a fulcrum. I didn’t know what to say. Should I divulge all of the truth or only part of it?

  “I think he figured it out,” I said.

  “When?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  She slowly nodded. I wasn’t reassured in the least. She kept her emotions bottled up inside, carefully contained. Sometimes I thought they were like butterflies in a glass jar. Without enough ventilation, they would eventually die. Or the jar might shatter and the butterflies fly free.

  “Then I was wise to ask him for a divorce.”

  I stared at her in shock.

  She looked at me, pain in her eyes.

  “You didn’t,” I said, but the words weren’t as important as what I was feeling at that moment. I believed her, but at the same time it was inconceivable.

  My mother, who’d been so loyal throughout these years, despite the provocation, had asked my father for divorce?

  I was a child again and my mother was leaving for the hospital. When she returned, I would have a brand new brother. I didn’t want a brand new brother. I wanted my mother to stay. I wanted everything to be normal, just like it always had been.

  “So that’s the reason for the meeting,” I said. “Is he going to marry one of his concubines?”

  My voice sounded rough even to my own ears, almost as if I were ninety and had grown tired of talking.

  She looked away. “I have no idea what your father’s going to do. Nor do I care at this point.”

  Perhaps it was the child in me, but I didn’t believe her. All my life my parents had made no secret of the fact that they were in love. I even chided them for showing their affection so blatantly. It was nothing to go i
nto my father’s library and find them embracing. Or kissing in the kitchen. When I was a teenager, I just rolled my eyes and muttered something about inappropriate behavior.

  Did she expect me to think that she suddenly didn’t feel anything for my father? If so, something monumental must’ve happened. Or maybe it was just the fact that he had two other families. Maybe she was tired of competing with other women who had a semi-official role in his life.

  I didn’t know what was at the root of her decision. Nor did I know what to say. Should I encourage her to go to marriage counseling? She was my mother. I couldn’t give advice to my mother.

  I tried to remember how my father had notified me about this meeting. Had he seemed regretful? Was there anything about his tone that was odd? Had he looked as if he wanted to confide something important to me, like the fact that his marriage was falling apart?

  I couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary, but then I had still been reeling from the information about the Stone of Scone. I was to be excused if I didn’t pick up on small signs. Besides, my father didn’t give off any signals unless he wanted someone to interpret them.

  Only a little while ago, at the door, he’d seemed downright jovial. Had he been playing a role? Or was he happy about the divorce?

  I was suddenly more depressed than I could ever remember being, and that included after I lost my job.

  “I’m no longer at the clinic,” I told my mother. Better she should learn from me than someone else. Like my father, for example.

  “I know,” she said. “I called you the other day and they informed me.”