What Were They Thinking?
43 Pain and Victory and Secrets
I LEFT.
Perhaps that is cowardice. I could imagine what Brian would do—or even my daughter. They would rain hell down on the school district and end up with the principal, the teacher, and the whole school board dismissed. But… I’m not that strong or that brave. It took two days before I worked up the courage to tell Marilyn.
“You need a lawyer,” Marilyn said. “I’ll call Rex.”
“Don’t. I already contacted a lawyer. I met with him yesterday.”
“And?”
“He said I could raise a big stink and make everyone hate me or just accept that I got dealt a losing hand and get on with life.”
“What did Art say?”
“I didn’t call him. I can’t. I went to the school yesterday and waited for her.”
“Her? The teacher? That’s very dangerous, love.”
“I stayed away until the last minute and watched from off the school grounds until I saw her go leave to go to her car. I followed her to her apartment. She lives in that crappy new apartment building they put up on James St. I beat her to the door.”
“And?”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you do this to me?”
“Slut! You got what you deserved. What they all deserve.”
“What did I ever do to you?”
“Oh, you’re just an unfortunate pawn. I kicked you over so I could capture the queen,” the blonde said.
“What are you talking about.”
“I should be on Broadway! I should be in musicals! Instead, I’m teaching a bunch of shit-assed second graders while she has her own television show, awards, and a dozen unnatural lovers. I can’t get her, but I can destroy you!”
“Elaine?”
“She should have stayed Candy Jones the pole dancer. That’s all she was ever destined for. I, Mercedes Lancaster, already had a star’s name. I should have my name in lights, not her!”
“Wait. That name. You… You were the girl at the Halloween party who gave Brian explicit permission to bite your ass and then complained because he did it.”
“He doesn’t even keep it a secret. It’s unnatural for a man to have a harem. Just like it’s unnatural for you to be part of one.”
“I’m not part of a harem!”
“Oh? Does it require more than two women and a man to qualify as a harem? You are all the same. It isn’t right. It’s immoral. I told that reporter all about it and all he could do was get thrown in jail. No one is going to throw me in jail. I’m not the one going down for this. Your daughter is one of his ‘girls’. What kind of mother are you? Just another of his immoral women in an unnatural relationship. You stink. I can’t get him, but I can sure get the ones he cares about.”
“You did this to get back at Brian?”
“No! He isn’t worth the time. Candace is the one who’s to blame. Be sure to tell him that. He turned one sentence into a career and elevated her. She doesn’t deserve to be on television. I’m a much better actress.”
“You’re pitiful.”
“Says the unemployed secretary. See if your ménage can help you now. See if your daughter’s lover can save you. You don’t even count.”
“You’re wrong, you know. My ego isn’t wrapped up in my role as a secretary. To me, that was just a job and now that you’ve shown why I lost it, it doesn’t even count. It’s actually kind of funny that you got pleasure from such a stupid act.”
“It wasn’t stupid. I won!”
“You know, you were much prettier before you got so ugly.”
“And then?”
“I walked away.” I pulled Marilyn to me and hugged her. “It’s only a job, beloved. What’s important is that we don’t let Brian know. This is the kind of thing he would go ballistic over and that would simply play into her hand. She’s… pathetic. There really isn’t a reason to give her any more than she thinks she has. She’ll find it was all empty vanity.”
Marilyn sighed and relaxed into my hug.
“I hate to say this kind of thing, but I don’t think we should tell Hayden, either. White knights run in our family.”
When I kissed Hayden’s lips for the last time on September 7, 2001, I had still never told him the secret. I don’t believe Marilyn had either. I went back to the nursery where I’d worked part time when I first moved to Mishawaka and got my old job back. Since I was available for more hours, they moved me up the chain pretty rapidly and in two years, I was managing the front office. Since I didn’t have children or other responsibilities, I could devote more time to my job.
The three of us created our dreams together and sometimes we lived in them. We never anticipated that it would be so many years before Hayden’s father died and freed him from the family farm. We had the plans for our home and were ready to tell NMH to start building it when his heart attack took him away from us. Marilyn and I clung to each other and once again, little Xan came to take care of us. She was seven years old by then and maybe she understood even better than we did the calming effect she had on people. Her grandpa would have so loved to hold her one more time before he died.
We were already numb when 9/11 came. It meant little more than that there were suddenly a few thousand more people in the world who were walking around in a fog trying to figure out how life could be so unfair. We left the house and everything else behind us and took Hayden’s ashes to Bloomington. We only returned to empty the house and sign the papers for its sale. And Marilyn wrapped me in her arms and begged me to never leave her. And I never will.
I think the whole country was numb after 9/11. Angry. Wanting to do something. And worried sick about our loved ones who were now put at risk. Out of all the clan, only Whitney had enlisted in the armed forces and we all prayed in our own ways for her safe return to us. I think even Brian prayed for her in his own way as he led the children through forms in the sacred space.
“If I thought there was a God who could save and protect my loved ones, I would have hunted him down and killed him after Denise died,” he once said. I had my own anger issues with the Almighty who allowed Hayden to be taken from us so early in his life. But I still prayed for Whitney.
Marilyn and I moved in with Dinita, who had been rattling around in her house ever since Angela moved to Minneapolis for her residency. It was never quite the same with Dinita after Hayden died. She was loving and concerned but too far separate from us to be a full-time part of Marilyn’s and my relationship. We spend most nights in the guest room, only occasionally inviting or being invited to join Dinita. And life went on.
We kept thinking we’d build our own house in the spring but by then the whole Casa del Fuego had moved from the Big House to the Mansion, the home Jessica had built and given to them. We decided to move to the Big House and start a bed and breakfast. It kept us busy. We met a lot of new people. It proved a popular place for students to stash their parents on visits. Gradually, it became known that we had horses available and while we never reached the level of being a dude ranch, people often came for a weekend or even a week that included riding, charged at a separate fee given to Theresa and Larry.
We laughed occasionally about running off to Massachusetts and getting married and Betts even suggested in 2012 that we come to Seattle to tie the knot but we were happy the way we were. Indiana was still reluctant to recognize same sex marriage, even after the federal district court ruled they had to in the summer of 2014. Of course, the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2015 made it a national ruling that same sex couples could not be denied a marriage license or rights as a married couple.
“Do I need to marry you to keep you as my wife?” Marilyn asked as she cuddled me in bed one night.
“I love you so much, Marilyn. I am yours with a marriage license or not. I believe our estate is well-planned and other than that, who can put asunder what we’ve joined together. Again and again and again,” I giggled. And, as old as we were—in our sixties—we still enjoyed our physical relationship. We spent our nights holding each other in the master suite.
There was always a back and forth in the political system; you expected that the president would be a republican for eight years and then a democrat for eight years. I seriously thought that the whole election process could be simplified. In my lifetime, only once had a party been in power for twelve years, when Bush followed Reagan.
I just wasn’t prepared for anything as radical and divisive as the 2016 election. And it was going to affect our village, too. You can’t expect any community to stay the same over the thirty years Corazón had been in existence. We were socially very liberal, but it was also a community of business people who were financially quite conservative. But the anger that was directed at the community was not fiscal. We were a prosperous community, serving a much broader area than our little village. Even though the barn was now entirely taken up by the private academy, the studio still had a presence. We had a number of small businesses and entrepreneurs who called Corazón home. Our downtown was vandalized one night during the campaign with red paint dumped all over the Christmas Tree square in the middle of town. The side of the barn-school was painted with a huge swastika and the words “Die Faggots.”
For a while, even the farmers, who were still the main clientele of the market, café, and bakery, dropped off. Those who came into the café seemed argumentative rather than the welcome and welcoming crowd we’d always had.
“We had gay marriage crammed down our throats. We’re going to take our country back.”
Oh, the vitriol flew freely in both directions. It wasn’t uncommon to see people wearing “Punch a Nazi” T-shirts sitting in the café or bakery.
The election, even with moderates holding the majority, didn’t end the divisiveness like most elections I could remember had. There was a man running for the State Legislature on the single platform plank of de-certifying the Village of Corazón as an Indiana community and placing it back in the hands and governance of the township. In a speech reminiscent of the failed actress who became a second grade teacher, he declared that the community had run rampant, forsaking common decency and becoming a haven for the lowest forms of sexual depravity. He also said that he supported a test case to go before the courts to have the ‘abomination of gay marriage’ reversed with a return to traditional Hoosier family values. In every instance, he held an extreme view.
Leave it to Whitney to face the guy down. It was in a town hall type meeting, not in Corazón, but at the high school. Roberts, the candidate, was rabid. He was good at whipping people up. He switched smoothly from hating gay marriage to calling upon a jingoist approach to patriotism.
“We’ve gone too long letting people get away with disrespecting our flag. I say, those who claim to have the right to step on the American flag or to kneel during the pledge of allegiance need to get acquainted with my second amendment rights,” Roberts said. There was some applause until Whitney stepped up to the microphone.
“Mr. Roberts, at what point did you swear the oath of enlistment?”
“I have never had the honor of serving our country in the military.”
“I have. I am Major Whitney Anderson, United States Marine Corps Retired. I not only swore the oath on June 1, 1994, I repeated it to myself daily for sixteen years of service. ‘I, Whitney Anderson, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.’ At no point did it say that I could pick and choose which parts of the Constitution I would support and defend. At no point did it say that the Second Amendment gave me the right to shoot at people who disagreed with me. At no point did it allow me to choose a select group of United States Citizens that I would defend above all others. If you were to be elected to the Indiana General Assembly on November sixth, the next day, November seventh, you would be administered the oath of office. It states that you do solemnly swear that you ‘will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and that you will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office of Representative, according to the law, and to the best of your ability.’ It is very similar to the oath I swore upon becoming a United States Marine. Mr. Roberts, at what point will your oath of office permit you to use your second amendment rights to suppress a citizen’s first amendment rights?”
And that election, just the threat against our community, is what brought us at last to Corazón’s Wedding Day.
“I think we should get married, Marilyn,” I said as I rubbed her sore knuckles with analgesic.
“Married? I’m seventy-one years old, girl. Who would want to marry an old battle-axe like me?”
“Battle-axe might be an appropriate term when you are angry, but old is not. I want to marry you, Marilyn. Let me rephrase that. Will you marry me, my love?”
“Oh, Anna. I’ve loved you since the first day I met you. Are you sure you want to be married to me?”
“Yes. I’m sure. I love you.”
“Of course, I’ll marry you, dear heart. What has brought all this on?”
“I’m worried about the condition of the world. I’m worried about our children and grandchildren. I’m worried about the community. We’re all vulnerable to the next whim that comes along. I want to marry you and know that nothing in this world can pull us apart.”
“I love you, my precious. Hayden and I have always loved you and I want you with me when it is our turn to be raked into the River of Life with his ashes. If this is what it takes to assure you that I will always be here with you, then let’s get married. Yes. I say, yes.”
I could see wheels turning in Rose’s head the moment we broached the subject of having an intimate wedding—perhaps on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t, however, until my daughter came to us with Courtney that I realized we started a ball rolling and it was picking up speed.
“Mom, I’d like you to meet my fiancée and ask your blessing on our marriage,” she said, scarcely hiding her grin.
“Did I forget to ask your blessing on my upcoming nuptials, daughter? Is that what this is about?”
“You didn’t ask my blessing and you didn’t invite us to the wedding. So we’re gate crashing.”
“We just assumed all the available clan would be there. We told Rose.”
“Rose is like the officiant, Mom.”
“Very well. Will you come to our wedding Christmas Eve, Jennifer and Courtney?”
“Yes!” they chorused. “Will you come to ours?”
“What? You’re serious?”
“Yes! And we’re going to invite Bill and Crystal, too, aren’t we, honey?”
“Of course. I’m not about to get married without my parents attending,” Courtney laughed.
“You’re really going to get married?”
“Yeah. It makes sense, you know?”
“What about… that boy. Brian?” I asked.
“Mom, Brian’s been married to Rose for thirteen years. It hasn’t slowed us down a bit.”
“We might invite him on the honeymoon,” Courtney added. “Of course, he might be in demand for that kind of thing.”
“What do you mean?” Marilyn asked.
“Oh. Well… uh… Sam and Hannah? You know.”
“No! They’re not!”
“Yeah.”
“A triple wedding?”
“Um… Better think bigger. I think you started something.”
As it turned out, we started something bigger than we ever imagined. Doreen and Rhiannon were somewhat predictable. Those two women reminded me of Marilyn and me. Of course, they had Brian, but Rhiannon had been married to Doug and Doreen was their cónyuge. It didn’t surprise me too much that Brenda and Louise wanted to tie the knot. They’d kept Cathy as the family breeder but at the expense of having her marry Carl.
Within the clan and eventually the tribe as a whole, there hadn’t been that many marriages in the past thirty years. Everyone focused on the tying of the thread in Rose’s handfasting ceremonies and skipped the idea of weddings and marriage licenses. Like Maggie and Jess. They’d moved in together almost as soon as Jess’s house was built and had lived there the past twenty years. Now, with two children in their teens, they decided it was time to get married.
I expected Judy and Monte to marry. Or Judy and Ross. I wasn’t really sure which it would be. Turned out that it was Ross and Monte who joined us that Christmas Eve. Judy had been living with both of them for years and planned to continue to do so. Carl’s little brother, Rich, traveled in from New Orleans with TK and their two kids for the wedding. Finally decided to marry. Looks like it will last.
There was one quickie divorce so Geoff and Kevin could marry. Robyn’s comment was “Now I get to be the bridesmaid!” The three of them had no intention of splitting up and Sarah was coming home from school in Minnesota for her dads’ ceremony. Once the word got out, of course, our kids and grandkids came home from every corner of the world. Literally. C-Rae and Addison flew back from Japan to be with us. Xan and Jessica flew back from Paris with Xan’s boyfriend. BD and Claudia had been working on building a school in Ecuador and flew back to witness Rhiannon and Doreen’s marriage with the rest of Doug’s children. And Brian’s. But I’ve lost track of which father is which.
Everything went as usual on Christmas Eve. We all went to the village square where about a hundred people gathered. At one time we’d seen nearly three hundred in the village on Christmas Eve, but the hundred who showed up this year were mostly people we actually knew. The ritual tree lighting and Yule log burning was over by nine-thirty and the members of the clan gathered in the barn. Though it was a school now, the area with the kitchen and fireplace continued to be used as the clan assembly area.
“Wow! The family is home,” Rose said. “We’ve all had a few little scares this past year or two. Instead of letting them take control and drive us into fruitless protests, though, we’ve all sought our own equilibrium. We’ve sought out the connections that make life important to us. For many of us, that has meant looking deeply into the eyes of one we love and asking that person to marry. That is what brings these nine couples before us this evening.”
There had never been so many weddings at one time in our community. Only two of the nine couples were heterosexual. Both already had children. Two couples were males but each had a woman standing with them. Carl and Cathy stood with Brenda and Louise. Of course, Brian was with the other three female couples.
And then there was Marilyn and me. I was sixty-five years old and Marilyn was seventy-one. We were both as giddy as teenagers. And the kiss I got from my beloved wife made me want to skip the reception and rush her to bed.
We made love. It was Christmas morning by the time we actually found our bed but we made love. We made love. I touched her face, licked her nipples, and plunged my fingers into her sex. And she feasted on my body with the same lust she’d shown thirty years ago.
No one can take that from us.
End Part VIII
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