Over Exposure
26
LOOK!
“Fran” by Kletr, ID87793204 licensed from Shutterstock.com.
ADRIENNE HAD GONE so far as to hire a studio with lights, backdrops, and an assistant to go with my assignment on Saturday. I found my two props trunks had been delivered there and Fran arrived soon after I was set up.
“Nate! I’m so happy to see you!” she said running to me and giving me a big hug and kiss. “Did you have to set this up so early in the morning? I’m hardly out of bed!”
“You mean a few minutes earlier and I could have caught you in bed? Darn!” I laughed.
“They’d have had to deliver the bed to the studio with me still in it,” she said. “But with you here, I wouldn’t have minded.”
“We’re going to do a whole new series of glamour photos for you today,” I said. “My instructions are that you will have a wardrobe with you and you should remain mostly clothed through at least half the photos. I don’t know why the studio saw fit to tell me that.”
“Probably so I wouldn’t start stripping as soon as I walked in. You remember Alice, my roommate, right? She helped me pack and is here to help me change clothes and make sure my makeup is right.” Fran lowered her voice to a whisper. “Of course, you are always welcome to help me undress.”
“We’ve got some serious work to do here. I’m hoping that by the end of the weekend, I will get to undress you, but that is for later,” I said. “Let’s get started with some standard portfolio shots before we get into any Attic Allure poses.”
We set to work. I was intensely aware that the photos I took were intended for publication in a national magazine and that awareness alone seemed to make everything take twice as long as it usually did. Whenever I started to lose my patience and get short with people, Adrienne would call a break and take me off where we were alone so she could settle me down.
Usually that just meant a few kisses and petting, but once she went so far as to give me a blowjob. It did wonders for my attitude as I worked with Fran.
By early afternoon, I was beginning to work with props from the chests and some of the interesting backdrops and furniture they had in the studio. By late afternoon, we’d progressed to ‘tasteful nudes.’ In other words, Fran was naked, but no naughty bits were showing. Still, the accessibility was nice and I spent some lovely time making sure her nipples were hard, even if I wasn’t including them in the picture.
The studio assistant, Lee, was really helpful and knew what he was doing. He set lights as I wanted them and pulled backdrops. He moved props and found things I needed. And he enjoyed seeing Fran gradually lose her clothes. Well, can’t blame him for that.
We worked until nearly seven with only breaks for food and sustenance. Adrienne took care of all that. She also worked as my assistant, taking rolls of film and labeling them, making sure the 4x5 film was correctly pulled and sealed in a dark envelope, and offering suggestions when needed. So, her use was not strictly improving my moods.
I think both Fran and Alice were relieved that I wasn’t asking them for any personal time Saturday night. We were all exhausted and they headed back to their home in the valley. Sunday would be location work. Adrienne had the list of locations and we were picking Fran and Alice up in the limo so we’d all be traveling together.
Sunday was supposed to be a day with fewer tourist crowds than Saturday, but it was Labor Day weekend, so there were more people out at the areas where I wanted photos than we were comfortable with. We got the obligatory shots in front of the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory, at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Sunset Strip, and Rodeo Drive. We obviously were showing Fran as a denizen of Hollywood, but I wanted something more delectable. We headed to the beach.
We got there at a perfect time as it was late in the day and people were leaving the beach. In the limo, we got Fran out of her clothes and into a bikini. That was fun. Our girl was beginning to get horny from all the handling she’d had that day by Alice, Adrienne, and me. I wasn’t sure if there was anything going on between Alice and Fran, but Alice was certainly free about handling her roommate.
We got down to the beach and Alice, Adrienne and our driver, Jerry, helped schlep equipment and hold reflectors so I could get some great shots against the sunset that still showed Fran’s body in detail, including when I pulled her top off. That got a few people pausing to stare, but it only lasted a few minutes. We didn’t want to get arrested for indecency.
As things started to cool down with the disappearance of the sun, we saw a bonfire lit down the beach a ways. I approached the hippies who were getting ready for some late-night partying. I could already smell weed being passed around. I asked if we could use their fire to get a few photos of an actress and once they saw Fran approaching in her bikini, they readily agreed. When I told them she’d get topless, they offered to help in any way they could.
I was able to set up and position Fran while there was still a slight glow on the horizon. We used reflectors off to one side so I could have her approach the fire and not be in complete silhouette. I got the picture in both black and white and color. Then I encouraged Fran to lose the top for some firelight nudes. I helped her get back into her top before any of the guys could get too close.
I closed up the camera and packed it away. I knew the magazine would just want black and white, but I thought we might all like a color print. We were done.
We talked to the guys on the beach for a while and they invited us to camp with them, but after thanking them again for the use of their fire, we schlepped all the equipment back to the limo and I spent a minute brushing Fran off to make sure she didn’t have sand clinging to her.
“You know, I’m still your limo slut,” she whispered to me.
“If it were just Adrienne and me…”
“Don’t worry. Alice would love to play, too. She acts all nice and demure, but she’s kind of a sex freak. If I actually get a guy in my life, I’ll have to find a different place to live. Alice always wants to be involved.”
“Are you okay? She’s not forcing you into something is she?”
“Oh, no. And she isn’t just living off me. She’s always willing to share what she brings home,” Fran said. “And I’m careful. I don’t share anything that might be catching.”
That set the stage for the long drive to the Valley, made longer by Adrienne’s suggestion to the driver that we needed time to come down and talk about the day.
The day ended with all four of us naked in the back of the limo. And yes, Alice was as eager to participate as Fran was and willingly received my cock in her mouth and in her pussy. She was also happy to go down on Adrienne while I was fucking Fran. When we got to their apartment, they didn’t bother to dress, but jumped out of the limo naked, gave Jerry a kiss at the door, and ran to their building with their butts glowing in the moonlight.
The next two days were equally intense in a different way—and I was sure costly, as well. We were back at the processing lab where I’d done the photos of the production for marketing. Only this was not only a weekend, it was a national holiday. Still, they let us in and we went straight to the darkroom.
They had the last color transparency I’d taken at the fire and dropped off on our way home the night before. It was great. I went straight to a 16x20 print of it to add to my gallery.
But the real work was processing all the black and white negs that I had. I’d taken pictures with both the Hasselblad and the Linhof. The Linhof 4x5 was called a field camera, but it still required a tripod and was heavy as hell. The quality of the photos, though, was superb. I’d print up proofs from the Hasselblad and share them with Fran, but I printed our best shots from the Linhof for submission.
As a last step, we needed transfer negatives of all the shots. That’s essentially a duplicate negative. Once I’d made my prints, the film went to the lab again and they duplicated it. The duplicate negatives all went to the magazine. We included an 8x10 print of the color image thinking it was possible they’d want to use it for a cover photo. I also made a print for Fran and one for our sponsor.
Monday night, I lay in Adrienne’s arms and just loved her body. She welcomed me in every way I could use her. Tuesday, after another long day in the lab, I had to be to the airport by seven in the evening for my flight back to Chicago.
I had an interesting seat companion and we chatted a lot about what was going on in Hollywood. Turned out she was an up-and-coming director and wanted to see some of my work. She’d graduated a couple of years previously and was currently mostly working with stage productions. She’d just been to LA to talk to a contact there about a documentary of some sort. Well, I had the portfolio of prints I’d just taken and she loved them. We exchanged cards and she said she might have use for me in the future.
I didn’t really consider that very likely, but we did have a nice time talking, eating dinner, and having a couple of drinks. She was especially interested in Fran after I’d explained her part in Over Exposure. She hadn’t seen the film yet, but promised she’d find it. She wondered if it would be possible to make a movie about a female photographer.
It was a nice way to pass the flight, but I forgot her name almost as soon as she said it. Claudia something or other.
I dragged myself off the plane and was thrilled to see Ronda waiting for me at the gate. It was almost three o’clock in the morning. We got all my gear and loaded it in the microbus. Anna had the car in Rockford where her classes had started that day. Like mine should have.
When we got home, we quietly got into bed next to Patricia and all cuddled together for the night.
I had four advanced level seminar classes this fall that each met for a three-hour block once a week. My Wednesday class was called Body, Space, and Image. The focus was on installation artwork from an anthropological perspective. Essentially, we were to explore how people experience photographs. I thought back to my photo exhibition in Tenbrook—which was really the only exhibition I’d had of just my work. It was patterned essentially after the way the fair exhibits were done. Other than that, I had a wall with matted photos in each of my studios that showed what I had for sale.
Professor Schlessinger gave us an overview of the semester and what we’d be doing, then broke us into groups of three to begin discussing our thoughts about exhibition. Leslie was in this class with me since it was a recommended course for photography seniors. There were a couple of different sections so the class didn’t get too big. Leslie and I joined up with Margot Williams as our third in our small group. She was a keen photographer, focused on journalism. She’d been in my photojournalism class the first semester I was in school, but her path through was enough different than mine that we hadn’t had a class together since.
“I can’t believe you opted to do production photography for school IDs instead of pursuing photojournalism. That first semester we all thought we’d be chasing you for four years and then you just disappeared from the program. Next thing I knew, you were taking my photo for the new student ID,” Margot said.
“ID photography was just an opportunity I had for work study,” I said, a little miffed at her dismissal. “I’m focused on art photography. I have a studio over on Wabash and another in Stratford, Ontario. Between terms and on vacation, I do photos in LA.”
Margot was a little taken aback by that. She looked at me and then at Leslie and then back at me.
“Seriously? Your newspaper photos were great. Then I never heard about you again. I thought you’d dropped out.”
“I’ve had a few other photos published. Local newspaper in Huntertown did a full page spread of my photos from the Washington moratorium. And the Trib ran my photo of the cop shooting a protester at the University. But journalism isn’t my focus. Art is.”
“I guess we’ll all get to see each other’s work this semester. Leslie, I’ve seen your fashion work. We covered a couple of the same events from different perspectives,” Margot said.
“Yeah. You’ll have to come over to Nate’s studio and see what he’s done. It might be a place to start when planning our exhibition,” Leslie said. “I don’t have any place to display my photos. They’re all designed for publication in fashion magazines or catalogs.”
“This could be an interesting semester,” Margot said.
I wasn’t sure about my afternoon class. We met on Monday and Wednesday for an hour and a half. I found out that a lot of this class was going to be focused on learning to sew! Not only that, we had to put in ten hours of work in the costume shop working on a theatre production. The winter show was going to be A Man for All Seasons. Most of our time in class was going to be spent making costumes for the show and we’d still have to spend ten hours outside of class making costumes.
The bright spot in the class was that the teaching assistant for the class was my photography assistant Rita, and the class took place in the same sewing shop where we had taken pictures of Renée last spring.
She laughed at me trying to thread a needle on my first day and showed me the trick.
I got home about three thirty, ready to make dinner, only to find that Ronda had it all under control. She still had almost three weeks before classes at the University of Chicago started. Her advisor had given her some reading to do when they got together for the symposium, but she was breezing through that.
With everything under control, we had time to make love before Patricia and Toni got home.
The Photography Seminar on Thursday morning was listed as the capstone of our photography degree. Talk about putting the pressure on. It seemed almost impossible that we could satisfy all the course requirements in one semester. We had to shape, plan, and begin a long-term photography project, relevant to our photography ambitions and interests. It had to include a research project relevant to those interests or ambitions. We needed to create a career strategy, and would have several guest speakers from the industry. I’d had Dr. Nader for a class once before. He’d co-taught the color photography class with Professor Hyatt.
It promised to be a good class, but along with the Body, Space, Image class, I didn’t see how I was ever going to have time for any other classes. And I still had two more upper level classes to attend next week on Monday and Tuesday. This was going to require a lot of investigating and searching what I wanted out of life. I wasn’t sure I was old enough to have that conversation!
I spent Thursday afternoon in the library, just trying to look for some idea of what I was going to do for this seminar.
Friday afternoon, I promised to meet Leslie and Margot at the studio so Margot could see what I’d done. She was still doubtful about my qualifications as a photographer. I thought that was a little strange because I hadn’t heard anything about her since our photojournalism class, either. She said she’d bring her portfolio, as did Leslie.
“So, you work for Camera Warehouse?” she said when she arrived and came upstairs.
“No. They provide the space for my studio through an agreement with my patrons. My business is separate,” I said.
“Like a contractor,” she stated firmly.
“Um… no. I have my own photography business called Attic Allure,” I said. She was not going to admit that I was actually a photographer if she could help it.
“I’ve heard of them. What do you do for them?”
That was it. Leslie started laughing hysterically just as I was going to lay into Margot and throw her out of the studio. I could get a different partner for our project.
“What’s so funny?” Margot asked, oblivious to my anger.
“You… You really don’t get it,” Leslie said. “Nate is Attic Allure. He does the posing, the appointments, the processing, the printing. He has three assistants—or is it four now, Nate?—and an accountant. He takes portraits and Attic Allure glamour photos every week, has won state competitions, is a consultant for a Hollywood movie, and has a studio in Canada that he is at every summer. You really need to look at his gallery. Yes. All these are Nate’s photos.”
“But… Oh, shit! Is that you?” Margot asked pointing to one of Leslie’s photos.
“And that and that. Modeling for Nate is an experience you should have,” Leslie said.
“Why so many posters of that movie, Over Exposure?”
“I consulted on it. Those are my photos,” I growled.
“No. Wait. I saw the credit on the movie for a photographer and… that was you?”
I just nodded and stepped back to let Leslie be the docent.
“Okay, that’s Nate’s portfolio,” Leslie said stepping back from the wall of pictures. “Let’s see yours.”
Margot stayed looking at the wall and threw a standard portfolio on the table. Leslie opened it.
“I don’t have anything,” Margot said. “Nothing serious like all this stuff. I’ve spent four years in classes devoted to learning and perfecting my craft, but aside from a few pieces that got accepted by downstate newspapers, I haven’t got anything that the public has seen. Not like this. Why are you even in college?” she demanded, turning to face me. Tears were running down her cheeks.
“I have a lot to learn,” I said.
“I can’t believe I’m even here,” she moaned, flopping on the sofa.
“These are some great photos,” Leslie said. “I know and recognize some of these events. How did you get backstage for the Donovan concert? This is great!”
“It was an assignment for Mr. Jonas in Photojournalism. I just showed them the assignment at the door and they took me backstage. He was really nice.”
“Why weren’t they published?” I asked. “I went to that concert and never even thought about photographing it.”
“Hmph. I was at the school developing film when Mr. Jonas came rushing in and told me to drop everything and go to a high school. It was Black Monday and all the students at most of the high schools walked out. It was a big deal, but there were so many pictures of it that mine were passed over. Thanks but no thanks, the paper said.”
“That’s the exact message I got from them the first time I submitted photos to the Trib,” I said. “And it wasn’t the last time, either. I got photos of the gangs marching in South Chicago to keep the peace after Dr. King’s murder and the paper told me that I needed to be where the action was. They had pictures of Oak Grove on fire.”
“I’ve wasted my whole time in college. My advisor told me not to worry about getting published. College was for building a portfolio so I could get a job later. I’ve got a lot of pretty pictures and school awards, and no credentials.”
“It’s not too late,” I said. “We’ll make a real presentation out of things and we’ll all get hired.”
I had a client on Saturday, but spent most of the weekend reading for my classes. Monday morning, I was back in class for a senior seminar called Literature on Film. In this class, we would read a novel—faster than I usually read, then watch the movie version of the same work. I don’t know how the instructor managed to get classroom versions of the films, but we started off reading Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and then watching the movie that came out a couple of years earlier. It was a pretty cool class and I thought I’d enjoy it, even if I had to read a novel every couple of weeks. And Dr. Victoria Stewart was pretty easy on the eyes in this class, too.
Of course, I had sewing on Monday afternoon.
I could tell right away that I would like my Tuesday morning class. Professor Argento recognized me right away from the symposium and it seemed I was included in some of the discussion he’d had with the class the previous Tuesday. The class was called Media and Social Justice. Most of the class would focus on television and newspapers, but Argento used my presence and the symposium to talk about the inclusion of all media in issues of social justice.
If I took a minute to look for it, I could see how all four of my senior seminars would tie together. I was looking forward to the year.
We took off on Saturday before my twenty-second birthday to go back to Sage so we could celebrate with my family. It was strange to not even stop in Tenbrook. We had limited time and only one purpose for the visit. My birthday was on Monday. We couldn’t spend any extra time because Anna and I both had school on Monday and Ronda’s classes started on Monday.
We all agreed that this would be a one-stop weekend. Mom had okayed us all staying at the parsonage.
That probably sounds a lot more liberal than it was. She knew I’d end up sleeping with at least one of my girlfriends. But we’d have two rooms, mostly because no bed had room for all of us and the room with the biggest bed also had the crib for Toni in it.
Of course, Toni was used to sleeping in a big girl bed now and wasn’t particularly happy about being in a baby bed. Grandpa Rich settled things down just fine. He told her stories that he made up, mixed in with silly songs that I sort of remembered from my own childhood.
“Grandpa’s all tired out now,” I said. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get ready for beddy.”
“Okay, Daddy,” Toni said. She smooched everyone goodnight—still a sloppy affair—and I carried her to the bathroom where Patricia met us and we got Toni’s teeth brushed and then tucked her into bed. When we were finished and Toni was drifting off to sleep, I headed back to the living room.
Mom was sitting there alone. This would usually be her time to practice her sermon, so I was surprised she wasn’t in her office. Kat had dragged Ronda and Anna to the dining room to play Yahtzee. Dad had already headed to his and Mom’s bedroom.
Mom was crying.
“Mom? What’s wrong?” I asked as I knelt beside her.
“Oh, it’s nothing really,” she said.
“Of course it is,” I answered. “My mother doesn’t cry over nothing.”
“I guess you’re right. It was Little Toni calling you Daddy that started my tears. And we’re Gampa and Gamma. You bring your family home to visit us. She really is the same as your daughter, isn’t she?”
“If I had fathered a child, I couldn’t be closer to her than I am with Toni,” I agreed. “I can imagine that after college and when we find a place to settle, that I might father a child. He or she will be wonderful if they know I love them as much as I love Toni. So, these can be happy tears, right?”
“Yes. They started that way. But… Your Dad, Nate. He’s not well.”
“Have they figured out what the problem is yet?” I sighed.
“They think so. He has a blockage in his colon.”
I tried to parse that. Colon—that’s the large intestine. A blockage? Like constipation?
“Did he, like, get a donut stuck? He eats so many of them.”
“Yes, but you notice, he’s not gaining any weight. He ate more at your birthday dinner tonight than he has in a week. That was to encourage Toni to eat. She always picks up his spirits when she visits. But he was so tired after you took her that he decided to go straight to bed.”
“That sounds pretty serious,” I said.
“It’s cancer, Nate.”
That word hung in the air like one of those gloomy clouds you see over a person in the Sunday comics. How could my dad have cancer?
“Are they going to… do something?” I asked.
“He’ll have surgery in two weeks. They hope they can resection it so he doesn’t need a colostomy, but the verdict is still out. It seems to be right where the small intestine empties into the large intestine. They won’t know for sure until they open him up.”
“Mom, we need the dates and times as you get them, so we can be here. You can’t just hide this stuff from us. Does Kat know? Naomi and Deborah? We’re family, Mom. We need to take care of him.”
“I knew you’d interrupt your life if we told you. Really, just a visit like you did today will keep him perked up right through the operation. You know, he loves Little Toni as much as you do. I think if I wasn’t around, he’d have asked Patricia to marry him just so he could take care of them.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re around. I’m not giving up Patricia and Toni for my father,” I laughed. “Honestly, Mom, you need to tell us what’s going on so we know and aren’t just senselessly worrying all the time. When is he scheduled for surgery?”
“He’s scheduled to go in on the eleventh. They’ll do surgery on the twelfth unless they discover something else will work,” Mom said. “Oh, Nate. I visit people in the hospital. I counsel them when they are sick or hurting. I cry with them when they are bereaved. But who cries with me?”
“I do, Mom. I cry with you.”
I got a chance to talk with Kat for a while before church Sunday. She knew and she was upset. She wanted to know if she should cancel her plans to move to Minneapolis next year. I told her Dad would be devastated to think he held her back. She should go and try to make it home to visit as often as possible. And I promised to do the same.
On the way home, I told my girlfriends. Patricia was openly crying and asked Anna to sit by her so Toni wouldn’t be upset. Ronda gripped my arm in the front seat so hard that I was sure she left marks. Of course, we would be back for Dad’s surgery. Of course.
In my mind, that meant to be prepared. When we got home, I got out my calendar and marked the dates. I wrote a note to Cassie telling her not to schedule anything that week. Starting Monday morning, I arranged conversations with each of my professors. Most of our class that day would be spent discussing 2001: A Space Odyssey. She was pleased that I’d seen the movie and was almost through the Clarke book. She said that since much of the class was based on discussion of the books and the films, I should be sure to be prepared for the following week’s initial discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird. We’d be delving deeply into social issues during this semester and would be focused on whether the movie drove home the message of the book or avoided it.
She gave me the full list of books and the movies we’d be watching. Two of the books were fairly short and one was a play made into a movie.
“I know from painful personal experience that it is not always possible to control when you may need to be with your family. Your classes this term are all heavily weighted on participation, so be sure you have all your assignments and participate in class as much as possible,” she said. “And Nate, good luck to you and your father.”
Professor Schlessinger was as sympathetic as the other professors, but cautioned me about one thing.
“Be sure you keep your teammates up to date on your situation and make sure you are supporting them appropriately. In this class, you depend on them and they depend on you. Don’t let them down.”
Margot wasn’t real happy about that, but I’d decided she wasn’t a very happy person. She had her own crises to deal with, which included her panic over having wasted her college years by not being out getting photos published. I thought she was doing fine and we’d have a great exhibition of our photos if we could determine how to display them.
Anyway, when the day before Dad was supposed to go to the hospital came around, I was ready to head to Sage to be with him. My girlfriends were not.
“Honey, I might need to drive down separately Monday evening,” Ronda said on Saturday. “I have my first test in Mandarin Monday afternoon. I really can’t miss it.”
“That goes for me, too,” Anna said. “Not the Mandarin part, but we’re in six-week exams already. I didn’t realize we were so close! I’m so sorry! I know I should be there with you.”
“Lovers,” I said, trying to calm them down, “no one said you have to be there. It’s my dad. I really need to go. If it was your dad, I’d try to be there with you, but I have classes, too. My professors wouldn’t have been so understanding if I said I was missing class because my girlfriend’s dad was having surgery.”
“I just feel terrible that I’m not there to support you,” Ronda said. “That’s what couples do. They support each other. I’ll try to break loose as soon as I can get there.”
“No. Don’t do that, sweetheart. Dad’s not dying. They’re going to go cut into him and remove the donut that got stuck in his intestine. That’s all. I need to be there for my mom and sister. Do you think Mom will even get a day off from preaching tomorrow morning? Life goes on. We all have to deal with what comes our way. Attend your classes and know I love you to the end of the earth and back. I can make this little trip by myself.”
“Not unless you intend to run off and leave us behind,” Patricia said. “Toni and I are coming with you.”
“The same applies to you, sweetheart. Your job has given you a ton of time off for Canada and holidays when we want to do something. You don’t need to feel obligated to come to Sage with me.”
“Nate, Rich is Toni’s gampa. We will be there. If you try to leave us behind, I’ll catch a bus. Or drop Anna at school and drive my car. You know how much we love your parents. I’m not in school. I have a job that pays $1.85 an hour. I don’t get paid vacations. I work so I can contribute to the family. I’m not going to work instead of contributing,” Patricia said firmly. She kissed me.
“I didn’t mean to sound like I don’t want you there,” I said. “I just don’t want people to feel obligated to me for this. Ronda and Anna should keep their classes up this week. I’ll call you in the evening to update you on how things are going. And we’ll all be back next weekend. It’s no different than when I have to go to LA for a week. I love you and I’ll be back home soon.”
“Hmm. LA. I suppose Reverend Mother Superior has a rule against bringing pets home,” Ronda giggled. “I’m sure Adrienne would be happy to join you.”
“I’ll have Patricia and Toni,” I said. “You might be better off calling and inviting her to spend the week with you. You’ll be all alone.”
“Hey! I’m always alone out in Rockford,” Anna broke in. “Maybe I should call Adrienne.”
“Just don’t scare her to death,” I laughed.
We got past the crisis point. This was something families had to figure out, I supposed. I’d miss Ronda and Anna being with me, but I always missed them when we were apart. Patricia and I were very close. Toni was cement in our relationship. But we both knew and understood that we weren’t a couple. We were two parts of a quad and were both committed to Ronda and Anna as much as to each other.
We got packed up and headed for Sage.
“You’re not upset with Ronda and Anna, are you?” Patricia asked as we drove across the state. We’d decided to take her car because we could make the trip faster in it than in the microbus.
“No,” I answered quickly. Maybe too quickly. “I’m… uh… disappointed, but I can recognize that as being really selfish. I’m not disappointed that they aren’t coming for my dad. I’m disappointed that they aren’t coming for me. Once I realized that, I realized that it was really a selfish thing of me. I wanted them to hold and comfort me. I wanted them to focus on me. That’s really not right. I needed to focus on them and on my father.”
“It’s okay to want your mates to focus on you,” she said. She reached into the back seat and gave Toni a handful of Cheerios. The little girl was happy whenever we were riding in the car and I figured in half an hour she’d be sound asleep. “When I lost Tony, I demanded all your attention. And you gave it to me. You held me and comforted me and when I found out I was pregnant, you even made love to me. And that was even though you had three other girlfriends and one just waiting for her chance. You gave me your time and held me together.”
“I realized even then, I loved you,” I said.
“And I loved you. But during that time, Chris and Ronda and Elizabeth and Anna all gave us the time we needed. They weren’t supporting me the way you were, but they were supporting you. And I realized that they were supporting me through you. Anna arranged our bed in the attic. Chris and Ronda hardly ever left your side. Elizabeth helped you by phone and arranged a model you could focus on helping. And through that, they were all supporting me. Now Ronda and Anna can’t be with us to support you, but they support me and helped me get ready to be with you. When I kiss you, remember it is all three of us kissing you.”
“Have we ever tried that?” I asked. “A four-way kiss. It’s only one more tongue than a three-way kiss.”
“We practically knock each other out in a three-way,” Patricia laughed. “We might need to make it a round robin kiss instead of an all at once kiss. But you know what? We’d do that. And we’d love it. Because it shows how much we each love each of the others. Just know that I’m standing in for the kisses from Ronda and Anna this week. They are with us in spirit and we’ll call them each night.”
“I love you, Patricia.”
“And I love you, Nate.”
“Lub you, Mommy. Lub you, Daddy,” Toni chimed from the back seat. Hmm. I wondered if she understood any of the rest of that conversation. In ten minutes, she was sound asleep.
That meant she was wide awake and ready to play with Gampa when we got to Sage. And he was ready for her. I thought it was pretty cool that he had a water pump from an old Studebaker in the house and was determined to tell Toni the whole story of how Deborah had taken apart the whole car to get to it. He even took her outside to show her where in the Galaxie the water pump was located and describe all the things Deborah would have to take off the car to get to it.
Toni was delighted, and a little greasy by dinner time.
Patricia took Toni to the bathroom and I helped Kat get dinner on the table. She’d pretty much taken over Saturday night cooking since Dad got sick.
“Look what I got,” she said. She held out a bit of paper.
“You’ve got your driver’s license? Already?” I said. Kat was sixteen and two months.
“Well, it’s provisional. I got a learner’s permit when I turned fifteen and a half and took driver’s education at school. I got my provisional license when I got home from Canada this summer.”
“Pretty cool,” I said. “I suppose you’re driving up to see Julie all the time now.”
“Huh-uh. Provisional license. I have to have a licensed relative or responsible adult in the car when I’m driving. It’s really only a step above a learner’s permit.”
“Um… You and Julie… you’re still…?”
“Yes,” Kat said, blushing. “We have a date later tonight. We don’t get to go out every weekend, but we’re finding time. Um… Did you have, like favorite places to go parking when you were dating in Tenbrook?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, not giving any additional information.
“Could you give me a list—or better yet, a map?”
“I’m not sure the places I went to would be particularly safe for two girls alone. I mean, they weren’t all that safe for the girls who went out with me,” I laughed.
“Nate,” she said threateningly. “I want someplace where I can go make love to my sweetheart. Is that clear enough?”
“That’s really clear,” I said. “Um… winter is a difficult time to do that. You’re pretty much limited to the back seat wherever you go. That can be pretty uncomfortable. There are a couple of places down by the river near Tenbrook we used to go. And a construction site by the Huntertown Country Club and Golf Course. The old Hanratty farm. But don’t you want someplace closer to down here? If you aren’t driving up to Tenbrook to pick her up, she’d be coming all the way down here to pick you up, and driving back up there to make out, and then back down here to bring you home, and then back to her home in Tenbrook.”
“I just don’t know places down here,” she sighed. Then without a transition she continued. “Nate, is Dad going to be okay?”
“I hope so. This cancer thing is a big scary word that freaks us all out. But they’ve got surgeries and treatments to get rid of it these days. He’ll probably be on some kind of special diet, too. You’ll have to expand your cooking skills.”
“I already know he can’t handle onions and tomatoes. I hope it isn’t more restrictive than that. Eliminating those two things cut my kitchen repertoire in half. I’m… just so worried about him.”
“Me too, kid. That’s why I’m here. We’re brother and sister and we need to support Mom and Dad.”
“What would I do without him? You know, Mom wouldn’t be half so moderate and even-tempered without Dad here. She’d probably even refuse to let me go to Minneapolis next year.”
“It isn’t about us, Kat,” I said. “We have feelings and we love our parents. We’d be hurt if anything happened to either one of them. But it’s them that we need to be concerned for. We need to make sure Dad isn’t suffering and that Mom stays emotionally stable. Once that’s accomplished, you and I have each other. We’ll laugh and cry and whoop for joy. We’ll wrestle Naomi and Deborah into being with us and sharing our joys and sorrows. That’s what a family is for. We support each other.”
“I miss my big dork when you’re gone,” she said.
We put the spaghetti and white sauce on the table and everyone gathered around.
We all got to church Sunday morning. Kat was pretty sleepy. I’d heard her come in around one-thirty in the morning. The car had been in the drive since midnight. Well, if you don’t have any place to go, I suppose parking in the driveway was a reasonable alternative.
When we got home, Deborah, Cameron, and Anthony arrived. John had to work, but the three of them would occupy the other spare bedroom and Deborah would be on hand when we took Dad to the hospital. Toni liked having her ‘cousins’ around. I think having all three of them helped to lessen the burden of having any one of them. They did a lot of self-entertaining.
The hardest part of the whole thing was the waiting. We’d wanted to spend time with Dad before he went in to the hospital, but once he was admitted, there was little any of us could do. We hung around the waiting area while doctors checked him and nurses took his temperature or something. Then we each got a chance to go in and sit with him a while.
At dinner time, the children needed to be fed. Patricia, Deborah, Kat, and Mom headed home with the kids and I stayed behind to play cribbage with Dad for a while. He seemed pretty relaxed, but kept looking up as if he had just heard something outside the room.
“Nate,” he finally said, “visiting hours are almost over. I just need to talk to you a minute. I need to tell you… I’m scared, son.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
