“So here is where the future gets more interesting,” I said to Marlena. “On the summer solstice, June 21, 1978, you will deliver not only a girl, but also a boy. Let's see what you can do with twins, hotshot.”
My message did not get through; I could see it in her eyes.
There is a tsk tsk tsk behind me. Caesar, who is forever chomping at the bit to get more involved with our family, thinks I am too hard on our beautiful cousin.
Caesar, while a slob himself, is a snob about appearances. He adores Marlena. He was ecstatic about the dramatic demise of ugly Mrs. Brown-Hawker, a true horror of a human being. He went a step further. He made sure there was an outing of “her” true gender. After Letty was asphyxiated by the meshing of her unraveling turban and the revolving mill wheel, her dead body lay by the side of the pond. Caesar used his telekinetic power to pull the heavy skirt up over the corpse's head. Thus were revealed male genitalia, so that all could see “she” was in fact a “he.”
The transvestite Lester Brown possessed a rabid jealousy of our siren family that truly was worthy of his mad ancestor. Now that Lester has been exposed as the gay lover of old sourpuss Thomas Hawker, the scandal is shaking Alta to its staid, bedrock foundation. And Caesar is laughing his pale ass off.
My son, who died on the same date I did, is now my constant companion in the spirit world. He buzzed in for the Zanelli reunion without an invitation, a by-your-leave, or a warning blast from on high. I think of him as the uninvited fairy at the banquet. He has taken a rabid interest in our family's future.
I don't know about anyone else, but I doubt that is a good thing.
Caesar is quick to point out that even with Letty Brown-Hawker out of the picture, there is another who has both the means and the motivation to poison the soup in our future households. I speak of my handsome grandson, Dakota Lawless, Caesar's son by that poor Lakota Sioux Indian girl.
I see Dakota will become a most powerful demon, the first our line has ever produced. The sparks he gave off during Drake's funeral did not escape my notice as he stood at the cemetery gates, staring moodily at the family he knows nothing about and yet evidently hates with a deep passion.
I have never told Chloe about Caesar and Dakota, nor did I mention Caesar by name in the siren's tale. As for being a demon's aunt, Chloe is clueless, though she may have her suspicions. Luckily, Dakota is not fully aware of his powers, at least not yet.
As they say in Hollywood, that is another story.
Chapter Forty-Four
HEAs
One Year Later
Alta, Wyoming
Following the dramatic events of Christmas week of 1977, the Widow Drake proves to be an exceptional ally to Marlena Bellum.
First, Lila lends Marlena enough money for Marlena to take Bryce Scattergood up on his offer to sell her, at a very attractive price, several historic properties from the Scattergood trust, as well as her ancestral Victorian home, the Bellums' “pink house,” that is about to be foreclosed on by the bank. Drake Enterprises has its eye out for demolition and development of the old neighborhoods. When Drake Enterprises calls foul, Bryce points out that Sarah Bellum, Marlena's grandmother, was a Scattergood. Therefore, Marlena's favored position in acquiring the lands is perfectly legal, a matter of a family member guarding for the family its own longstanding interest.
Second, at the end of probate, when Lila receives the bulk of Drake's holdings, she then executes a trust devolving control of her estate to Drake's heirs after her death, which means Marlena's twins will be fabulously wealthy one day.
Third, Lila becomes the first investor in the Scattergood-Bellum REIT, dedicated to acquiring historic properties in Wyoming and the Dakotas. The launch is slated for the summer of 1979. Marlena's PR engine is underway a year in advance, publishing in its mission statement a claim that “the acquiring and preserving of buildings of historic and aesthetic value in the northeast district of Wyoming furthers the community interest more than does profit-based development.”
Fourth, the operation of the REIT is to be housed in Drake's Roost, which Lila has already turned over to the Northeast Territory Historical Society, of which Bryce is the founder and president. NTHS plans to use as seed money the revenue from public tours of the mansion.
Marlena now gazes into her crystal ball with an ever deeper sense of purpose. Chloe helps her scrub the ball from time to time.
Marlena and Ron are having cocktails in the parlor. She tells Ron she would not be at all surprised if there turns out to be a hidden agenda in Lila's investment in the REIT. Lila's sights, she believes, are fixed squarely on Bryce Scattergood.
“That is my prediction. Lila will marry Bryce,” Marlena says to Ron. “She is the marrying kind, no matter what she says.”
Ron represses a smile.
Anyone who knows both women will bet serious money on their becoming business partners as soon as Marlena completes the finishing touches to Sally's Shell Mansion in Key West and after Lila returns from Europe. Then watch out, Wyoming developers!
Ron's personal wish for the future is no secret to anyone. His love for the beautiful mother of the twins is both physical and spiritual. Their occasional lovemaking seems to him a dance of hearts and bones, where one cannot be felt apart from the other.
Marlena is learning to trust again, and Ron must be content to wait patiently. He believes the feeling she has for him is more than physical. He hopes one day they will form a permanent bond. The twin girl, who is already talking at six months, calls him Dr. Daddy. He does not mention the word “marriage” to Zaddie's mother, however.
In the past year, Marlena's life has become much more joyous and inclusive. It is also something of a juggling act. She is fully engaged in doing all the things she loves passionately, child-rearing being uppermost among them. She is very, very busy.
Though he would like to be everything to her, Ron is primarily the choir to whom Marlena sings. Listening to Marlena talk about her causes and watching her nurse the twins are the joys of his life (outside the bedroom). He frequently eggs her on for their mutual amusement.
And so, when he now asks Marlena whether Lila's investment in the REIT is a sound one, she obligingly plays her part to the hilt.
“It will be a tough struggle against the development interests, but we will prevail,” asserts Marlena in what Ron calls her “mother-preacher” voice.
“Affordable housing does not have to mean clear-cutting trees and pre-fabbed homes. Solar panels, rehabs, and rooftop gardens are the wave of the future. Mark my words.”
Ron pretends to play devil's advocate. “But that sounds like a terrific amount of work for you and Bryce, darling. Will you have time for your writing? You owe it to your readers to continue.”
“What did you say?”
Across the slate coffee table, Apollo is bellowing “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for the twins at the top of his lungs. Ron raises his voice and tries again. “I said, you owe it to your extended family to keep on writing.”
Marlena shakes her head at Ron, indicating she still cannot hear him.
Ron bellows, “ALL OF US CHICKENS WANT YOU TO KEEP ON WRITING.”
She smiles and shrugs.
Marlena's self-published book, Home Schooling: How to Build a Happy Home/life, which she co-authored with Dr. Chloe Vye, has been a phenomenal success. Written in seven months, its first printing sold out in three. The bestseller is a compendium of advice on post-modern architecture fused with psychology; there are floorplans and child-rearing techniques, even tips on improving one's memory.
The final chapter, “The Glass Treasure Chest,” was on Marlena's lap for final editing when she had her first labor pain. Chloe said afterward that “the mere thought of our manuscript being so close to the finish line was enough to induce labor.” Part storytelling, part architectural drawings, part how-to-do it, the essay tutors modern home-makers on how glass brick, vaulted ceilings, feng shui and Navajo artifacts can co-exist happily in a sunny, whimsi
cal, cheerful home environment.
Indeed Marlena has created that very same home environment, with the help of her extended family, in her beloved pink house, which now includes a wing for the grandmother-in-residence, Faith Bellum. Grammie Bellum played a key role at the grand birthing event.
“Publish or perish!” Marlena sang out to Chloe on her way into the district hospital in Corinthus. The twins were born in the best possible setting, the new Cassandra Vye birthing room, the first in Wyoming. It was funded by the trust Chloe manages.
Dr. Ron presided over the natural childbirth, assisted by the extended family: Faith, Chloe, Annie, Lila, Coddie, Bryce, Apollo, Sally, and Stretch.
“Here is the second one!” he called out. “Whoopee—a boy, with black hair! His head is about half the size of hers. Not that his is small, but hers is rounder and bigger than any I have ever seen.”
After the birth, Marlena seldom is alone with the twins. Ron is a constant presence and Chloe stops by daily, as does Lila, when she is in town. Today, Apollo and Ron are the sole visitors.
Apollo abruptly pauses in his singing.
“The big redhead wants you,” he declares.
Zaddie has been sucking on Apollo's knuckle with such greedy ferocity that the knuckle is turning purple.
“Hand her over, champ.”
Fussing as she smells breast milk, Zaddie clamps on, working the nipple furiously.
Now Grammie Bellum is coming down the central staircase in her chenille robe and slippers, having been awakened from her afternoon nap by Apollo's singing. She frowns at him, and Apollo flees to the kitchen with little Gordie.
Faith sits down next to her daughter on the buttery-yellow leather couch. She detests the color, but Marlena says yellow makes people cheerful, so she dare not say a word against it. She diverts her brown eyes from Marlena's overflowing breasts and engorged nipples, and gazes proudly at her round-headed, red-haired granddaughter.
“Do you think you will ever wear a bra again, Lena? With your figure and your rise in the publishing world, I would think—”
“Think what you want, Mama. But first hear me out.”
“Uh, oh,” says Ron. “Better run and take cover, Faith.”
“I predict Britain's next prime minister will be a woman named Margaret Thatcher. In 2012, I foresee a young woman on the cover of Time magazine with her arms folded, and the caption is 'What—Me Marry?' I have seen these things in my dreams, Mama. The old restrictions that held us back are falling by the wayside. Women are well on their way to running the world, and I will not get in their way by conforming to outdated stereotypes. Now, if Zaddie ever asks me to wear a bra, I will do so. But not until then. That is the best I can do.”
“Oh, have it your own way, Marlena. You always do.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The Snowflake Parade
Winter, 1979
San Francisco, California
It is Thanksgiving of 1979. In the restored kitchen of the pink house, Lila Coffin Drake is reading an invitation Marlena has posted on the refrigerator door. The invitation, designed like a snowflake, is held in place by a Devil's Tower magnet. It requests that Marlena take an honored seat on the reviewers' dais at San Francisco's Snowflake Parade, to be held on the winter solstice, December 21, 1979.
Marlena's former roommate Kit is the organizer of the new event. Marlena has been generous with her time, her advice, and her donations.
Lila declares to her friend, who is bustling around the kitchen: “Go, Marlena, why don't you? Have some fun for a change! Just because you're bucking for mother of the year, you don't have to be a total stick-in-the-mud. I volunteer Bryce to make sure your mother does not run off with the twins. Bryce is a natural nanny, and he wields a big stick—or at least that's what I hear.”
Bryce has just come into the kitchen. Lila's nudge is followed by a bashful grin. Bryce Scattergood and Lila Coffin Drake are now an item of interest in the Alta grapevine. Lila loves bossing around Wyoming's foremost land preservationist, almost as much as he enjoys the amazingly muscular pussy she sports under her designer widow's weeds.
“Back me up on this,” Lila says to Dr. Ron, who has been standing there watching the interchange. “Marlena is the Queen Mother of PR. She needs to get back out there. You will go with her, of course.”
“Of course,” he answers. “I just hope no one expects me to wear a purple tiara.”
Ultimately it is Dr. Ron who convinces Marlena she can safely leave the twins in the care of the extended family.
“It will be a good excuse for the two of us to get away for a few days, darling. And you will get to support an old friend.”
A few days before departure, Ron comes into the house with a glum expression.
“What’s up, darling?”
“Oh, hello, Lila.” He puts down the case of wine he is carrying. “There is a hitch in the travel plan. Pastor Dodge needs an appendectomy.” Lila immediately offers to go in Ron's place, and after more discussion, the new travel arrangements are phoned in.
“By the way, Marlena, your ex called while you were out,” Lila says. “He told me some Native American who lives in Alta will be visiting him while you're in San Francisco. Did you know about that?”
“Do you suppose he means Dakota Lawless, the carpenter who works for Bates?”
“Yep, that is the one. Apparently they bumped into each other at a bar after Harry's funeral. They have stayed in contact ever since. They even write letters back and forth.”
“That's odd. You don't hear about guys doing that sort of thing unless they are gay. Coddie is certainly not gay. Do you suppose Dakota is?”
Lila shrugs. “Beats me. All I know is that Coddie has invited him out for a long weekend, and it happens to be the same time you will be there. So he hopes you will come by for a drink, yadda yadda.”
“Sure thing. But you mean 'we,' don't you?”
“Oh no you don't. I'll travel with you, but sloppy exes aren't my bag.”
Getting on the plane in Rapid City, Marlena looks out the window at the wintry landscape and thinks how life has changed since the birth of the twins. Now every time she flies, her heart is in her throat. Lila's lively company is enjoyable, but she wishes Ron were with them. Whenever she and Ron are apart for a few days, she feels a wee bit afraid of something unknown coming at her. Just to be safe, she is wearing Cassandra's traveling cloak on her journey, the one that mysteriously protected her from harm on the evening of the Christmas Fire Night Ball in 1977.
Marlena and Lila find the City in December is the same lively, colorful scene it always has been, a sea of energy swarming up and down the seven hills under a gray sky. In the Davis Cup, USA has beat Italy (5-0). Bath houses are in full swing. There is still talk about the Reverend Jim Jones, the People's Temple, and last year's mass suicide events in Guyana. Bruce Springsteen and The Darkness Tour are playing a repeat gig at the Winterland.
Though Marlena expects Lila to wander off and hook up with her old drinking friends across the bay at the Sausalito Yacht Club, Lila sticks to Marlena like a second skin. The night before the parade, the two sirens, one black-haired and one redheaded, are sitting cross-legged in a circle with Kit's girlfriends, on the floor in a high-ceilinged Castro flat.
Lila whips out from her Louis Vuitton bag a gilt photo album and proudly passes it around. The photos are of Marlena's twins. The women ooh and ahh, and Marlena blushes happily. She says, “I have become more skeptical as I grow older. But I believe everything I hear when my children are being praised to the skies.”
The party is hosted by Jenny, a bisexual friend of Kit who has just left her husband. Jenny is unsure of her gender identity; she is dating an assortment of what she calls “lipstick lesbians and older father figures.”
As Lila listens to the young women gossip, she is taken back to her own adventures luring rich bachelors on the Eastern seaboard into her net. The biggest one she landed, of course, was the West's most elusive bachelor,
forty-year-old Harry Drake.
Marlena turns to Lila and whispers into her ear. “Go ahead and tell them a story, won't you, Lila? These girls think they are the first women on the planet to bed a man for selfish reasons.”
Lila's eyes light up with laughter. “Okay, but only because you are too chicken to tell any of yours.”
When Lila clears her throat to get attention, obediently the circle quiets.
“Ladies, when I was young, I dated a distinguished elderly Boston doctor. Hal's mother was a Rockefeller, and Hal was a college friend of my father. He looked like someone's uncle, but he was kind, and he adored me, especially in bed.”
“Details, details,” the girls chorus.
“Well, only because you insist.”
There are giggles all around.
“After I had my orgasm, old Hal would pound away for an hour or so. His cock was propped up with an experimental penile implant.”
“Omigod!” shrieks Jenny.
“Over a long Thanksgiving weekend, I yielded to pressure. I agreed we would meet at his vacation home in the mountains near Yosemite. I wanted to go out West, and this was as good an excuse as any. Have I mentioned, by the way, that Hal was a retired gynecologist, internationally famed for his reconstructions of vaginas?”
They all scream.
“So, I arrive at Hal's house, which is nondescript, but it has this great view of the mountains. I am in his bedroom, obligingly pulling off my clothes, when this huge, black dog comes roaring in. Hal has never mentioned he owns a Rottweiler. I'm not big on slobbering dogs. Well, this one weighs 200 pounds and is entirely untrained. The damn thing is pawing at my nipples. When he begins to gnaw on them, I try to get Hal's attention.”
“Where was Hal?” asks Jenny.
“Sitting with his back to me, on the phone with his ex-wife. She volunteered at a halfway house for women. They were discussing a vagina he was going to rebuild for a woman his ex had rescued.”
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