Heaven’s Gate
99 Epilogue—18 Years Later
“Papa talk.”
I looked at the nearly empty bakery with just my daughter and me baking bread. She had flour on her nose. I used my towel and wiped it off, wondering at her beautiful blonde hair. She was every bit as beautiful as her mother. And at twelve years old, she was already developing into a stunning young woman. Dani started bacon frying at the stove.
“What should I say?” I asked. “We can talk all we want to.”
“Is that the story of your whole life?”
“Well, as the old Yankee once said, ‘Not chyit.’ I think I’ve got some living yet to do.”
“But what about all the time since 9/11?”
“Well, those years… Life just isn’t as interesting when you are an adult as it is when you are a kid. It seems that most of the stories of those years are about all the kids on the ranch growing up. It’s really their story to tell, not mine.”
“But there must be something interesting that happened. What about Aunt Whitney?”
“You’ve talked to Aunt Whitney often enough. She was promoted to Major right after 9/11. Times were pretty intense and she was busy in Djibouti. They needed a commander who had a full grasp of the culture and the base. The way things heated up in Afghanistan and Iraq, the base in Djibouti became more important and a higher-ranking officer was put in charge. Whitney’s unit processed all the prisoners of war and the people under her command were stationed in several locations. She was sent out with her special team to combat the kidnappers who were continuing to operate out of Somalia and Yemen two or three more times. About the time you were born, she was offered a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel to take command at Guantanamo. Whitney liked being a policeman, but didn’t like being a jailer. She chose to resign her commission and retire instead. She came home.”
“And now she coaches basketball at West Monroe,” my daughter sighed.
“Still the only woman coaching a boys’ basketball team in Indiana,” I laughed. “And a championship team, at that.”
“Do you still talk to La Madrina?”
“Every morning, sweetheart. And a lot of other times.”
“When will she be home?”
“They are shooting on location in Vancouver and at some camp called Tyax in the mountains north of Whistler. I hear there’s some really good trail riding up there. She says they’ll be finished on location in two more weeks and will be back here before the snow flies,” I said. I smiled at my daughter, my youngest child. The last one still in the nest.
“Why did you marry Mom instead of La Madrina? How could you even decide?”
“Well, now that’s a good question. Maybe it had to do with La Madrina trying to kill me.”
“Papa! She didn’t!”
“Yes, she did. But that’s not really the reason I didn’t marry her.”
“What happened?”
“Well, after her second movie came out and got panned so badly, she got pretty depressed. She’s always been a little on the edge. You’ve seen her when she was in a panic attack. Well, we all knew that exercise helped her get balanced, so we encouraged her to work out with us in the mornings doing forms. When the kids left the Sacred Space that day, she wanted to spar with me. I could see she was supercharged and wondered if she might even have taken too many antidepressants. I just said, ‘No.’”
“What happened?”
“She hit me. Hard. It took me by surprise and when I didn’t respond, she hit me again. And again. She kept hitting and kicking me, even when I hit the floor. I don’t think she would have stopped if Whitney hadn’t come through the door and kicked her ass.”
“But Papa… Why didn’t you stop her? Aunt Whitney says you are the most powerful master around.”
“Well, I still think that’s debatable and have no intentions of testing the notion. You need to watch Whitney and Amy spar sometime. But… I made a promise. Back when we were still in high school, I could see that Hannah was afraid of me. I sat down with her and promised that I would never hit her, no matter what. When she went off the handle, I found that I couldn’t lift a hand, even to protect myself.”
“Papa, what if she’d killed you?”
“It would be a different story, wouldn’t it? Whitney had words with both of us. It’s the day that I realized that there was more to a promise than what you say. What I’d really promised that day was never to hurt her. If she’d killed me, that would have hurt her worse than anything else I could have done. It took us a while to work through that. But even with La Madrina, sex works wonders.”
“So that still doesn’t say why you married Mama.”
“You know, she and I were the only ones who were surprised by it? It seems that all the rest of the clan knew we’d be married back when we were in high school. They couldn’t believe it took us so long. But she had her job and she was really good at it. I had the bakery and the children and that was really all I wanted. But she came to me that day… that beautiful September morning… and she said, ‘I’m ready for us to have our child, Brian.’ It might sound sappy to a girl your age. It wasn’t sappy. Well, it was, but it didn’t seem like it at the time. As soon as she said those words, I dropped to my knee in front of her and said, “Rose, my Matrón, will you marry me?’ You should have seen the expression on her face!”
“That’s so romantic!”
“Well, all our cónyuge happened to be in the room at the time and the applause and catcalls kind of broke the mood. But she said, ‘Yes,’ and I’ve never regretted that moment. And look who we got as a result. Miss Anna Marie Frost. Who has six more years to be Papa’s only child at home. We should plan what we’re going to do!”
I don’t know why I don’t have even more children, other than the fact that most of us in the clan are either only children or one of two. Liz is the notable exception, but she was the baby of the twelve kids and so was alone a lot. Of my fifteen cónyuge, Rhiannon and Doreen had seven between them. Cassie and Mary had two each. Liz had two. Sam, Dani, Rose, and Courtney only had one each. Five decided that they didn’t want, couldn’t have, or shouldn’t have children—Nikki, Hannah, Jessica, Elaine, and Jennifer—but they all doted on the other kids. Whitney miscarried three times after she was out of the service. It was heartbreaking. We put markers in the River for each of them. I ended up with only seventeen. And I truly didn’t care which ones were Doug’s and which were Josh’s. They were all my children.
Anna’s mama, my darling Rose, is still the CEO of HCEN. The position has truly become an executive position now. She hired a president/chief operating officer with a strong industry background who bought into our operating principles and dug in to grow the network. It’s actually four channels now. We’ve added programming on different channels as our market ages. The original channel is still focused on emerging adults, seventeen to twenty-three, with programming that doesn’t just revolve around pop culture. Armand passed away about the same time that his last shares were transferred to Casa del Fuego. We owe a lot to him.
When Casa del Fuego moved out of the big house into what we all referred to as ‘the mansion,’ there was a little concern about what we’d do with our original dwelling. Hannah shot another miniseries using the big house as the location, but then Mom and Anna decided they’d like to buy it from us instead of building in the village. I thought they’d want some nice little hideaway for the two of them, but instead they did some remodeling and opened a bed and breakfast. They’ve been having fun there now for fifteen years and have no intentions of ever retiring. I don’t think there has ever been a day when the two of them didn’t visit Dad out in the River.
Dad’s not the only one we’ve laid to rest out there. Marshall and Martha were frail by the time Dad died and they only lasted another few months. Angela and Del’s first baby was stillborn. It was a real shock, but they brought the baby’s ashes home and scattered them in the River promising they’d be back one day. They’ve had two more sweet kids who like to spend summers here at the ranch.
Lily Cortales went to join her daughter a couple of years ago. Fucking cancer. Sly is hanging on, partly just to take care of his grandchildren, I think. And I don’t just mean Brian Jr. Melanie has been married three times but with no kids. We tried to tell her she didn’t have to marry every costar. She’s none the worse for wear and has a new role in a science fiction space thriller that might shoot her stardom through the roof. But her sister Stephanie fell in love with a boy her sophomore year in high school. They were married the week after graduation and she had their first baby seven months later. He’s about the same age as my Anna. She had two more before I think they finally figured out what caused it. The five of them live with Sly and he loves those grandkids. I know he often meets Mom and Anna at the River as they go to talk to their spouses in the evening. I’ve even seen him leave the big house early in the morning when I was headed to the bakery.
Matt and Ellie are living in Lawrence on the east edge of Indianapolis. It still has the feel of an old hippie community and hasn’t changed much in the past fifty years. Except for the addition of their artisan bakery, The Baker’s Dozen Too. Of course, he does a bigger variety of baked goods than I ever have. The two of them went to Paris and met up with a former competitor of mine named Carla Leoni. She taught them pastry-making. They’ve got a pretty good staff and supply bread and pastries for a chain of coffee shops all over Indianapolis. They waited to get started on their family, so their two children aren’t the oldest of my grandchildren.
That would be James and Céleste’s children. It was no surprise that James and Céleste were basically living with each other (and sleeping together) from the time they were children. In fact, they announced cheerfully that they had consummated their relationship at exactly four-twenty-eight in the morning on their seventeenth birthday. The time of their birth. How many couples can claim to have been born in the same bed at exactly the same time and not even be related? Céleste waited until after high school graduation to get pregnant. James completed his EMT training. They wanted to get out of town so they weren’t quite so close to Aunt Nicolette. They chose Columbus. Not too far. But far enough to keep their children off the ranch most of the time. Liz, I’m happy to say, is just as horny today as she was when she was fourteen and my permission on the ranch still stands. Any time, any place. I take advantage of that. She and Nikki bought new motorcycles last year and rode to the big rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. They were there all of twelve hours and decided it wasn’t their scene. After seeing Rushmore and Crazy Horse, they headed for LA and spent a week with Elaine.
Elaine is currently splitting her time between LA and Corazón. She was finally moved into the host slot on late night variety show that had given her exposure on national television. Of course, Charles Knight was long gone and there had been two other incarnations of the show since then but Elaine finally had her ‘one day’. Amber is the bright new host of Chick Chat and both are successful. I miss Elaine when she’s not on the ranch. I’m thinking I’ll take a trip to LA this fall. She’s promised me a swimming pool full of bikinis. I think they were going to be on people, not just floating in the water. But, knowing Elaine…
Amber and Rich never got back together. Amber has a home among the cottages near Nikki. I often get a call to visit. Rich announced to his brother one day soon after 9/11 that he was quitting Ron’s construction company. The next day his apartment was cleaned out and he was gone. It took us a few days to find out that he’d moved to St. Louis with TK. She was eventually transferred to New Orleans and he went with her. Unknown talents were discovered and Rich plays saxophone in a New Orleans jazz band now. He and TK have two kids. She still manages a big resort hotel there.
There are nine kids from the ranch who are only home in the summer now. School just started and they are off to college. Of the older kids, Lamar and Sarah’s son Henry met a nice girl in college and they are living together in Louisville where she is from. They haven’t announced a wedding date yet. Rhiannon’s twins, Claudia and BD, are seniors at USC. I think they’ll stay out there. They live together and most people think they are married. I’d be concerned if they weren’t such flat-out good people. They spent a year in South America building schools. I think they have a future in that.
Geoff and Robyn’s daughter Sarah is in grad school—in theater of all things!—in Minneapolis. And C-Rae is visiting Aunt Addison in Japan for the coming year, learning the ins and outs of International Business from a true master. When she’s finished her internship, she says she’s going to do some serious looking for a guy who can keep up with her. That will be some guy! But Addison finally succeeded in finding one. I’m pretty sure C-Rae will, too.
Courtney sold Price Engineering and entertains herself buying the latest computer equipment and tinkering with new programming languages. She also is on the board at HCEN and teaches at IU. She holds that software is stupid because it acts logically instead of intelligently. She is working on a solution. Jennifer is Executive Vice President of HCEN. Needless to say, she is happy in her power position.
Samantha is never apart from Hannah. Even when Brian Junior was little, Sam went on location with Hannah and stayed as her personal assistant. Hannah was as adamant about Junior being with her as about Samantha. It’s going to be tough on them when they get back from this location work in BC. Junior and Patricia left for Brown University in August. I don’t think there’s anything between the two of them more than being best friends. They just wanted to share college and Nikki talked them into Brown. Raven is in her third year there and promised to take care of them. I know Cassie is a little weepy, even though there is a whole school full of little kids for her to teach. She misses her babies as much as I do.
We bought out the rights to The Homemakers’ Hour from Harvey and Polly a few years ago, acquiring the last of their business. Mary is the producer and Reese has brought new life to the show as the hostess, expanding her Young Cooking presence into a complete ninety minutes of chat and cooking. We are trying a new process and releasing the show to both our own HCEN station and to a full syndicate of broadcast stations. So far, it looks like Reese has completely captured the mid-morning timeslot.
Josh is now a doctor of Physical Therapy (dPT) and has his own clinic in Bloomington. Everyone loves being treated by him. He is a gentle caring soul. He also has a couple additional lovers, approved by Cassie and Mary. Wild Liz and insane Nikki. They want to go back to Sturgis next summer if Josh and I will go with them. Liz opened a beauty shop in the village. Her business has become so popular that she hired two other beauticians to work with her.
Nicolette decided she didn’t like screenwriting and went back to pumping out novels—eighteen in her young adult women’s series. The latest is I Could Be Your Hero. Frankly, I think Nikki’s decision was part of why Hannah’s second movie bombed so badly. It caused some bad feelings between the two and Nikki didn’t leave her cottage to come to the mansion for several months. We finally coaxed her back and she spends weekends with the family now. If she isn’t visiting Céleste and James in Columbus. Of course, she nearly came to blows with Jessica, too. She was muttering something about ‘she wants to kill me.’ If it weren’t for Xan who loves both of them and the fact that they all three spoke French, I’m not sure who would have survived.
Sandy finally met and married her one and only. He’s a nice guy who works at HCEN as the webmaster. They live in Indy with their two kids. When Douglas Jr. left for college last year, both Doreen and Rhiannon were pretty sad. I finally convinced them to move into the mansion where I can love them and take care of them. We put their house up for sale and the new owners seem like a nice couple who plan to expand their family exponentially. Rhiannon has a nice little office in the village next to the new studio. She produced an entire book of new home designs and sells them through the manufactured housing group up north. Doreen is managing the newspaper on the non-editorial side now. They’ve continued to share a bed and I’m often in it with both of them.
Once Matthew and Ellie moved away, Dani became my chief assistant in the mornings in the bakery. She still had to work in the café at six if her sisters were out of town, but she never missed getting up with me and walking hand-in-hand to the shop. I admit, there have been a few times while the bread was rising that we slipped back into the store room and made love. Usually we were done and had ourselves put back together by the time the kids arrived. There were times, though, that we just fell asleep back there and one of the kids would come to wake us up. No matter how often we made love, and never with protection, she never got pregnant again. We know it worked once. She never wanted to be tested saying, ‘if it was meant to be it would be.’
And Xan. Our precious little girl. She still isn’t very big and topped out at four-ten, just short of Judy, our new County Sheriff. But what a dynamo. Yesterday we got a picture postcard from Amsterdam. I wasn’t sure these things still existed. Xan and Jessica were meeting with some potential donors for their foundation. I never managed to get Jessica pregnant either, even though we tried for a couple of years. We had fertility tests done and it turned out that she was sterile. We needn’t have worried about that part of the whole 9/11 mess after all. But Xan formed some kind of bond with Jessica over that time. Learning French, teaching sign language. Then the two of them went to special classes and learned Spanish and Italian. Xan says she’s learning Farsi now because it’s rude to speak a language the person you are talking to doesn’t understand. Wonder where she learned that.
Xan also has a boyfriend. He seems to be the main reason she spends so much time in Paris. She translated the agreement and had him sign it before she would date him at all. When he realized she was serious, he signed and has never, to our knowledge, broken it. When she brought him to the ranch last summer, he proved to be a regular cowboy and we couldn’t get him off the horses for dinner some nights.
When the markets recovered after 9/11, Jessica discovered she was the only shareholder in Agence Portes du Ciel. Apparently planning to own Jessica, Conrad had included terms in the agency ownership contract that upon death of either owner, the shares owned by that person would revert to the company. Two years after 9/11, Jessica went ahead and took the company public, selling the bulk of her shares. With a new ownership and board of directors, she was replaced as the CEO and eventually retired gracefully from the business.
The money she made funded the initial contribution to Heaven’s Grace, Xan and Jessica’s foundation. They were funding four orphanage schools in the Middle East and Africa. Whitney was on their board of directors. I think BD and Claudia might end up joining them just so they can continue to build schools.
I guess I’m still living next door to Heaven—when she’s home—since my suite in the mansion is next door to hers. There are fourteen master suites in the mansion, but there are seldom more than half that are occupied on any given night unless all the kids are home. Then I go with my cónyuge to the big room downstairs.
Yeah.
“Papa, have you ever gone without sex?” my youngest daughter asked. Dani, working on breakfast, snorted. Jennifer would have been proud.
“I’m not sure that’s an appropriate topic for me to discuss with a twelve-year-old,” I said.
“Pa-pa. It’s not like I’m going to have sex. Even James and Céleste obeyed the rules and waited until they were seventeen. To go all the way. I’m not suggesting anything; I just want to know how things work.”
“I think you’ll figure that out quickly enough on your own.”
“I’ll ask Mom.”
“And she’d tell you. All right, you figure it out, then. I have fifteen cónyuge. I still, much to my amazement, have five amiga. I don’t know why. And there are a couple women who just occasionally want to spend time with me for their own reasons. That includes Amy, who never wanted to clutter her life with a full-time man as long as there were a few in the village she could share occasionally. That amounts to twenty-three willing and often impatient sex partners. Granted, most of them are bisexual and/or have another lover. But sheer numbers dictate that I am seldom without a bed partner unless I go away alone. There have been times. But in the past thirty years, those have been a rarity. Satisfied?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t neglecting them. Girls have needs, too, you know.” Dani laughed out loud at that one. I ruffled my daughter’s hair and realized I’d just put flour in her silky blonde tresses. I laughed.
“Everyone has needs, sweetie. The most important thing…”
“Is to treat each other with kindness and respect,” she quoted.
“And?” I asked.
“And always remember, Papa: No matter what, I still love you.”
The End
Continued in
Living Next Door to Heaven 10: What Were They Thinking?
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