March - Like Lions 9 страница

There was just the small fact of the outside world to contend with.

"I like not telling people," she confessed to me. "It makes me feel like I have a secret. Whenever stuff goes wrong at work, I think about us and Gerard and them. I feel better. It makes me smile because no one knows a thing. I don't want to tell them... at least, not yet."

I nodded. I pulled up the blanket on the bed and took us under it completely. I told Jasmine we were going to live in a secret den the rest of our lives, raise children out in the wilderness, and it would be a secret. Our secret, our pride. Gerard would be there too and he would help the kid bathe in the river. Vivian and Cassandra and Mikey and Alexa would come to visit. But we would be away from everyone. Away from the world and how fucked up it was.

She laughed and laughed, and for awhile, I thought she believed me. But then I realized: I had just given her everything. This was what she had wanted. Everything, although sex was important, had nothing to do with it. It was us together. The fantasy of a simple life that maybe could come true. Maybe. It was this infinite secret to the universe that we held together, that we created together, and that no one could take away from us.

I had always been in love with Jasmine. Jasmine and Gerard - they were always everything to me. But that was the first night where I felt like what it meant to give everything to someone. It was incredible. It was the first night, I think, that Jasmine really fell in love with me.

Chapter Six

When I came home, no one was around. Jasmine had ended up going to work the next morning, but I hung around the apartment catching some sleep where I could because I knew I had to work that night. I couldn't call in two days in a row, but Jasmine's comment did get me thinking about other options I had. I could switch to the day shift. I would earn less, but I was realizing that the people I wanted to be around the most lived their lives in the daylight. Even Gerard now was switching his schedule back because of all the speaking gigs Vivian was getting him to do. It was stressing him out and making him forget his lines to have a sporadic sleeping schedule. He needed regularity in his life, or so Vivian had said. But the nights that I did spend at Vivian's place I would hear him getting up at three in the morning and puttering around his work room. He was slow going on the portraits, being so distracted, but he was also a determined and stubborn person. He was going to get them done, even if that meant he messed up some art history lecture the next day. It was all worth it to him. He had been utterly voracious about the work on his next projects. He wasn't planning on having a show, though; this urgency was implemented by himself.

I was surprised when I had not found him, or Vivian, around. I expected that he would either be sleeping or working, and eventually just made a cup of tea and waited for either one of them to return. It was Cassandra I saw first, just coming back from a piano lesson. She came in the back door and stopped as soon as she saw me sitting at the kitchen table. Though she had behaved well at the dinner when we had announced the baby, I knew she was still mad at me from before, when I had not met Noelle. She gave me the death stare as she came into the kitchen; it was becoming characteristic to her appearance now.

"Evening Cassandra," I said, ignoring her icy blue eyes. "Would you like some tea?"

"Where is my mom?" she asked. She took off her boots and scarf and hung them up by the door.

"I don't know. I thought she had gone to get you. Maybe she's working. I don't know where Gerard is either."

Cassandra turned her gaze from me, extremely dissatisfied by my answer. She went over to the refrigerator and told me that I must have been blind as well as slow, because there was a note right there. She usually wasn't this vulgar or problematic. She usually yelled at other people for using terms like those, and now she was using them on me. I apologized for not seeing the note.

"Things have been busy. But at least we know where they are," I said, reading the scrap of paper over her shoulder. Gerard had gone over to see Jasmine to begin drawing her and Vivian had gone over for a visit as well. They must have all arranged this during the day while I was sleeping. I felt somewhat hurt to be left out of the mix, but not as much as Cassandra was fixating on me now.

"I guess you don't see a lot of things, now. That kid of yours has blinded you," she seethed at me.

"Okay, okay," I said, putting my hands up. "I'm sorry that I didn't meet Noelle. I don't know if I ever officially apologized to you about this, but I am truly sorry. I really wanted to and I'm glad that you had thought about me. Can we stop being at one another's throats?"

She squinted at me, gauging how serious I was. "Fine."

"Okay," I began. "Is this a truce? Do we need to put this in writing?"

She shook her head, but did extend her hand. We shook, and then somewhat satisfied with the result, I moved on. "Now, Cassandra, when you're insulting me, please leave my kid out of this. You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Frank!" she said, exasperated. "You have no idea what a truce is!"

I laughed, trying to lighten the mood. "This is what big brothers are for. Teaching you how the real world works."

She narrowed her eyes. "Oh please, first off, remember that I'm older and second off, I could probably tell you more things about that world to begin with."

"Oh really? How has your relationship affected this outlook?" I probed. She was having fun wining arguments; once the apology was out of the way, the seriousness also faded. I was having fun.

"Make me dinner and maybe I'll enlighten you. If there is one thing I have learned from this year it is never do anything for free."

"All right," I conceded, and then, before Cassandra got too excited: "Kraft dinner it is!"

She groaned loudly and dragged herself and her bag to the table, but she didn't disagree. I felt proud as I got the water onto boil, as if I had won a little match myself. The meal was easy enough to cook, and before long, we were eating it fairly quickly. We finished a box fairly easily between us and I went back to make more, knowing that I would need a lunch for work anyway.

Cassandra was about to get up and go when I caught her and told her to sit back down. She had confidently only told me about piano work that she was doing, and absolutely nothing about Noelle. "Not so fast," I told her. "Divulge your information."

"I told you, piano is my relationship."

" Noelle, Cassandra. At least tell me about her if I can't meet her anytime soon again."

Cassandra pouted a bit, but then, after I sat down with another bowl (she was not hungry anymore) she began to tell me more. They were both in the same concert school band, and she was super-smart and into science. Her mother was open minded, and knew that Noelle liked girls, but hadn't put the two and two together yet that Cassandra also liked girls. They had been sleeping over at one another's houses for months now and no one had found out yet.

"I'm sure my mom knows, but she doesn't care. She can't really tell me to stop, either, because, you know, her past. It would be hypocritical. There is no concern about pregnancy, either, so that is another plus for me." She smiled, and perhaps I was reading too much into it, but she seemed to be saying her inability to get pregnant was a good thing and chiding me in her own way about the situation I was in.

So I one upped her. I showed her the photo of the ultrasound that I had had in my back pocket. I was taking it to work with me as well that night. Not to show anyone, but to just have with me; to keep my secret close and safe. Cassandra took the photo and wriggled her nose at it.

"It's a blur of bumps. I don't know how you get so excited about this stuff. About Jasmine and Gerard. Sex is good, I should know now, but it's nothing worth fawning over bumps on a crumpled piece of paper for," she informed me, sliding the picture back. I took it and considered her for a second, trying to not let a fifteen-year-old's view on relationships overpower my own.

"What about love, Cassandra? Don't you love Noelle? Doesn't that make you understand this a little better?"

She rolled her eyes. "Noelle loves me. She told me last week."

"What did you say?"

"That we were out of food and should probably get more. What should I say? We were eating while watching a movie and then, bam, there it was. It was so pointless."

"How is love pointless?"

She widened her eyes at me, as if she didn't know who I was talking to. "How can you say that? It's such a huge distraction. I want to be playing the piano. Even while we have sex, I at least get to strengthen my fingers."

"Cassandra," I said, pushing my food away. "Are you really thinking of that while you have sex?"

"What should I think about? I had fun, sure, but love? No. It's a distraction."

Her words were making me nervous because I understood absolutely everything she said. I used to think relationships were a distraction too. It was why I never really had a real one when I was in undergrad after Gerard had left. It was why Jasmine and I were together in the winter and then apart later. But the winter was almost over. It was officially spring now, and though it got cold at night, it was slowly warming and the ground was thawing during the day. There was no more winter, but I still had my relationships, and I was still so in love with her. With Gerard. Even though I never kept a real relationship those seven years Gerard was gone, I would still never admit that the time I had spent with him had been a distraction. Nor the time I spent with Jasmine. When I was with them, we talked about art, but I didn't really think about my own art. I thought about them. I didn't imagine panting while I fingered them. That seemed perverse.

Cassandra stared at me, annoyed, waiting for a response. "I don't know..." I began, trying to sort out my thoughts. "Things change. People change. But I don't think that loving them is a distraction. This is just what happened and I love it the same way."

"Bullshit," she said. She raised her eyebrows in a match between us. "You call bullshit on me, and then I call bullshit on you. See how it feels."

"What do you...?"

"You say that things change, people change, and all of those maxims. That love is real to you and not a distraction. Okay, fine. That is you. This is me, Frank, and you asked about me. You can't judge my way of loving - even if that's not loving - and say it's wrong. It hurts, doesn't it, when I called bullshit on the little world you created?"

I bit my lip. It did hurt. It never occurred to me that she was really trying to instigate that hurt because that was what she had felt when I discounted her feelings on love. When I had poked holes in the web of stories she was telling herself to keep her view of the world in place, she had done the same for me, and now I got it. I nodded my head, and I apologized.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. She got up to make some tea. "Maybe I will bring her around again."

I smiled. "Why would you bother if it's a distraction? If this love part of your relationship isn't as important as the piano?"

"I never said bringing her here was for me. Noelle loves me. It's for her, purely. She'll feel loved and then I'll get sex. Win-win." She smiled, quite proud of her deduction.

"Just be careful. So long as you're careful with her feelings too, then I wish you all the best," I said sincerely. I wanted to speculate that she was really in love with Noelle and this was a facade to keep her own composure and not lose control, but what did it matter? It was Cassandra and Noelle's world and so long as no one got hurt, it was fine. I had my own world to keep up with. I took the photo out of my pants pocket and looked at it once again. Cassandra got some tea and then sat down with me; I was glad our relationship was somewhat repaired. I had missed talking to her, and from what I could tell, it seemed like she had missed having me around as well. Even though she had been done dinner and we were done our discussion, she still stuck around. She sipped at her tea and then gave me a funny smile.

"So...." she started, feeling excited with her next statement and reminding me how much I loved her, as a sister, as a crazy unusual person who had worked their way into my life, "Do you want any tips for Jasmine?"

Work that night seemed to pass by slower and slower with each hour. Maybe it was because I had decided to talk to Mikey later on that week about seeing if I could get a better job with his company, or failing that, talk to Mel and get him to switch my shift. He liked me and he always said that I did an amazing job, especially with the night shift. Maybe he would promote me, particularly if I had a family on the way. I quickly pushed that idea out of my mind. No, my family was my secret right then, and if I told anyone, I would want Gerard to be a part of it. The last thing I needed were the cashiers to think that I was a faggot and had some strange sex-crazed family started. I didn't care what they thought, but I knew how it looked. It looked like the best thing in the world to me, but as I was slowly learning that reflections didn't look the same to everyone who viewed them. People were always bogged down by their own interpretations. So I kept my mouth shut about that side of my life, and with the upcoming knowledge inside of me that this would probably be my last night shift, the time crawled by.

Just as the sun was finally starting to appear before the skyline, someone came into the store. I heard the damn bell jangle while I was in the back tidying up and I cursed its existence. We had had no customers for the past little while and if I finished organizing these boxes, I would get to go home early. Max had already gone and the two cashiers agreed to stay so Max could go. There needed to be two people here at least in the early morning hours, especially now that pharmacy was open. With a sigh, I finished the boxes and then went out of the front, hoping that I could tell the person to go or find what they needed right away and then clock out myself.

To my surprise, the person was Vivian She was dressed to go to work, but with how alert she was and how her hair looked, it was clear that she had just gotten up and gotten ready. She looked fantastic, and for her to be looking this great this early meant she had something special going on. I had walked to work that night, so I figured she may have wanted to give me a ride, but my heart thudded in my chest. She seemed to be dressed a bit more professionally that that. I was caught between a panic 'I'm in trouble oh god what did I do' and a 'Someone else is in trouble oh god what did they do' type of feeling, when she finally made eye contact with me. She smiled and my reservations were lost. She walked over to me and took my arm.

"Hey, I have a surprise for you. Can you go early? I need to get this done before I have to go to work," she informed me. I nodded quickly and ran to the back to get my stuff. I nearly forgot to take my uniform off before I headed out the door. I said goodbye to no one.

We got into her car and she began to drive, without saying a word. I was bouncing in my seat. "What is it?"

She smiled and shook her head. "Surprise."

"Oh, come on, Viv, this is killing me. I thought someone was dead or I had fucked up."

"Nope, just a nice surprise for my good friends."

"Friends? Is someone else coming?" I checked the back seat in a panic, and saw nothing. I squirmed some more in my seat and whined for the answer.

"Shhh, Gerard and Jasmine weren't nearly as fussy as you."

I was beginning to feel like I was twelve. I wanted to shout and pound my feet. There had been too many surprises recently. I needed to have control back into my life. I began to tell Vivian that I had a surprise for her and reached into my pants pocket. She smiled at the photo, but told me it wasn't a surprise. "Jasmine showed me."

"Dammit. I hate working night shift," I complained. "I miss everything."

"So quit," Vivian said. She turned to look at me seriously. "I know I gave you a lot of shit before, but if you don't like the job, you don't like the job. I will help find you a better one."

"You serious?" I asked her, forgetting everything else and thinking this was the reason she had come to pick me up. Were we going to an interview? She merely smirked, and then continued to drive. She turned one more corner and then announced, before I could say anything else, "We're here."

I looked around where she had parked and it seemed the same as any other place. We were in a parking lot, full of cars, and then surrounded by buildings. Apartment buildings? No, I looked closer and they were town houses, stacked super close together, right on top of one another. It looked crammed, but when I got out of the car, it began to acquire some spaciousness. The houses were close together, but they seemed to pile on endlessly towards the sky. At that moment, the horizon seemed to be below them as the sun was still struggled to come up. It was a chilly morning with frost forming already on the car, the grass that was showing, and the sign that was right before we drove into the place. The sign caught my attention and I realized that this was a complex, and that there was vacancy.

I looked over at Vivian. She smiled at me and nodded. "Come on, let's look inside. My realtor friend gave me the key and he said this was the one that was for sale."

I followed behind Vivian instinctively, but I tried to sputter out claims against what we were doing, "Jasmine said that she doesn't want to buy anything. She can't. At least not right now. She wants to be alone..."

Vivian countered them all: "Jasmine came to look at this with me last night. With Gerard. I showed them together."

I hated working night shift even more now. I wished I had been able to go with them. I wanted to see Jasmine change her mind and for Gerard to embrace a new place. We had been moving so much recently I was surprised he was willing to go too.

"But what about cost? We weren't sure before if we could afford it, and now, with the kid and if I quit my job...."

Again, wonderful Vivian: "The realtor is my friend. He likes me. I give him a few paintings, we work out something under the table, and it's really not that bad. It's a steal, actually. Jasmine is looking over the paperwork right now and figuring out the payment plan. Keep in mind, you guys have three incomes now. Not one, not two, but three. And there are always people to help."

"But... but..." I kept going. We were right at the door. I didn't want to go inside if I was going to end up liking it and then realize it would be out of reach. I would have rather not bother at all.

"Oh, Frank," Vivian stated, having enough of me. "Just go inside and don't worry about being happy so much. It takes the fun right out of it."

She jammed the key in the door, and practically pushed me over the threshold. I fell willingly, and tried to embrace my fall.

The town house was gorgeous, and it seemed to fit all the requirements we were looking for. The kitchen had tile floors and was big enough to have a kitchen table. It branched off into the living room on the other side, and then the stairs lead up to the next floor of the house. Two bedrooms were there, one much larger than the other, and a small open room where people could talk and put furniture, and a bathroom. The next floor up had a big bathroom and a bedroom, and then the floor above that was just a bedroom and a small bathroom with a closet. It was perfect. There were enough rooms to have a study, an art place, a darkroom, and bedrooms for each of us. Jasmine had been reading about co-sleeping and though she wasn't sure if she wanted to do that with the kid, there was that option for they to have their own bed or to share ours. We hadn't been asking for much when we went out looking, and this seemed to provide it nice and simply. It wasn't a house - but it wasn't an apartment. Apartments were too isolating; they had no backyard for kids, but houses made us all feel uncomfortable, too normal, for our triptych of parenting. This was the in-between, the not-quite of what we all were. I was in love with the floors, the walls, and the fixtures. Vivian took me around leading the way and saying a small thing here or there about the features, and I just nodded and took it all in with open eyes.

There was no furniture set up because it was brand new, so we could see how big all the rooms were, and it gave me no prior ideas about what that room had to be. I didn't have to see neon awash and clothing everywhere from past users, how they had configured themselves. This was all left blank for us, for us to create our own reality over top of it. Having no furniture around also mean that if there were any problems with a part of the floor or ceiling or lights, we would be able to notice it right away. There were problems, every house had them even if it was brand new, but Vivian made a meticulous list of them and added it to the ones from before and said she would use these to lower the price. She knew what she was doing; she could talk to these types of people and had done it before with her own house. We were going to get it, she promised me. There was no going back.

"You said that Gerard and Jasmine liked this, right?" I asked when we had finished the tour. We were in the top bedroom, the one that was the smallest and hidden away from everything. It had a small triangular window that looked out on all the rest of the complex. It faced east, and was the side that embraced the sun in the early morning. I knew this room would be Gerard's. Even though Jasmine liked the morning, she would want a bigger room. This top one reminded me of the small apartment Gerard had had in Paris. He had woken up at dawn there and would try to watch the sunrise. This was his room, I knew it would be. Soon enough, he would be looking out this window.

Vivian nodded to my question. "You were the last person I was waiting for. They said if you liked it, to go ahead. They already know the price and I know the price and I think it's okay. You'll be fine."

I know I will be, I thought. I looked around the entire room. I felt as if I had gone back in time, and when I looked at the window again, I was surprised I didn't see the Eiffel Tower. I felt the weight of the world lifted off my chest. We had a house, if I said yes. We had our den, our home, our fortress, our Paris, our hiding place in the woods. We were going to be okay.

"Yes," I told Vivian. "I like it. I want to live here."

She nodded, proudly. "And so you will." She leaned down and kissed me on the forehead, and began to walk down the stairs. She waited in the car until I was ready to go. I watched the sun come up for a little while longer, and then I said goodbye, knowing that I would soon be back.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14