Chapter 50: Nests

Tuesday, January 1, 1985

Jas and I started out the first morning of the new year the way we’d started the year itself — kissing, rather enthusiastically.

She sighed and snuggled up after that.

“Right where I want to be, with the person I want to spend the year with,” she said.

“The same for me,” I said.

“I think it’s going to be a great one.”

“Me, too!”

“Anything big in 1985 you know of?” she said.

“There are some big movies, I’m pretty sure. No, I won’t spoil them.”

“Hrmph!” she said, giggling.

“Pretty sure there are big doings in the Soviet Union. New leader. Better leader, too.”

“That’s good! You mentioned that, I’m pretty sure.”

“I’m optimistic, anyway. After that...”

I shrugged.

“There’s probably a lot, but it’s not a year which sticks out particularly much. There’s a concert I’d really like to go to, if we can, and I won’t spoil that, either.”

“Spoilsport!”

“Hey, you may get to go to a concert which is legendary thirty-plus years from now.”

She giggled.

“I take it back! I’ll manage the suspense. That, or I’ll badger Angie or Laura.”

“That works,” I said, chuckling.

“I love you,” she said, hugging me.

“I love you, too,” I said, hugging right back.

“We should get up and be sociable.”

“Yeah, definitely!”

Mom had gone fairly all-out for breakfast, what with us there and Dad off work today.

Over breakfast, Mom said, “Your father and I were talking about things yesterday, and I realized I’d left something off my Thanksgiving list.”

Dad had a bit of a grin on his face. Not a big one, but enough.

“Oh?” I said.

Mom nodded.

“I’m very thankful you two — and Angie and Paige, too! — have made our ‘empty nest’ feel less empty. Friends of mine say they never see their kids, even when they come to Houston for some reason. You’ve spent plenty of time here, and it’s really ... it’s ... I’m very thankful for that,” she said, starting to sniffle a bit by the end.

Dad hugged her, looking a bit emotional himself.

“We love visiting,” Jas said. “You’ve been so good to me, and to Paige.”

“And me and Angie, of course,” I said. “I said long ago I couldn’t imagine having better parents, and I still can’t. Mind you, Camille and Francis are really great, too...”

Jas gave me a grin and a wink.

“ ... but you’re the parents Angie and I needed, and you’re the parents — and friends — we’ll always need.”

Mom was crying more, not less, but it was a very good, happy crying. That much was obvious.

“And you’ve been the children we always wanted,” Dad said. “You both turned out even better than we’d dare hoped! But Helen’s right. I hear the same things. Doesn’t matter if they’re ‘good kids’ or not, everyone flies the coop. You’ve flown the coop, too. Heck, in some ways you’ve flown the coop more, what with renting a house! But it’s just not the way most of them seem to, and we’re very grateful for that.”

“This isn’t ‘home’ now,” I said, “But, wherever the two of you live will always be a home to us, too. Nothing’s going to change that.”

Mom, who’d mostly pulled herself back together, said, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry like this!”

Jas smiled and said, “It’s okay. No ... it’s more than okay. It’s good! Don’t apologize for that.”

I just nodded, smiling.

Mom said, “I remember thinking to myself a year ago, ‘Well, this is it. This is the year they move out. I’ve only even had Angie for a few years and now they’ll be gone.’ But you haven’t been gone, not like that. I feel good about this year!”

“Me, too!” Dad said.

“I think it’s going to be a really good year,” I said.

“Definitely!” Jas said.

We interrupted breakfast for a group hug. I was a bit sorry Angie and Paige weren’t here, but they’d get their chance to say these things to Mom and Dad, too. Their being with Tony and Jean was as important. The two of them undoubtedly had their own fears of an ‘empty nest,’ so Paige and Angie being an enthusiastic part of their family was undoubtedly important to them, too.

The rest of the day was anticlimactic, which was fine. We stayed at the house all day. Sometimes many of us were reading, but at least one of us, and sometimes all of us, were on the phone nearly the entire day.

Angie and Paige joined us mid-afternoon and the six of us played games, talked, and called Grandmother and Professor Berman together. They were happy with the New Year’s wishes. We called Grandma, too, but she was a bit ... out of it. I could see the inevitable drawing ever closer.

We also sang Christmas songs and show tunes. Well, the four of us sang. Mom and Dad tried to avoid it as much as possible.

It still both amused and somewhat puzzled me that I could sing in this life. Was it the universe ‘setting me up’ for my brief, if very significant, Drama career? Or was it just ‘one of those things?’ Did the answer really matter, either way?

Jas and I took off for the Nguyen house just after dinner. When we got there, Cammie was off at the Rileys’ house. We considered it a good sign.

Camille and Francis welcomed us, but pled tiredness and didn’t stay up late. Apparently, they hadn’t gotten home until very late. It sounded like they’d had a great time, though! I was pretty sure that sort of party would never be something Jas and I wanted for ourselves, but I was happy it worked for them.

Cammie came back around eight. Things were still going fairly well with the Rileys. She wasn’t convinced everything was settled, but she was definitely leaning more in that direction than she had been before Thanksgiving or even before their winter trip.

I didn’t say it to her, not yet, but I was considering the possibility things might wind up not that far off from how my ex-wife and my parents had interacted. There was something of a tacit truce which both sides mostly stuck to, but that was about it. I was hoping for something better, but there might always be some doubt and strain there.

Jas and I stayed up until eleven, then went to bed. Tomorrow was ‘Jane Day,’ and it was also the day Cammie and Mel went back to College Station. We still had a lot of Winter Break left, but our Houston time for this holiday was rapidly drawing to a close.

Wednesday, January 2, 1985

Cammie and Mel left for College Station around one, so we were there to see them off. They promised to call when they got there. We, in turn, said we’d see them in a couple of days.

After that, Angie and I headed to Jane’s for our appointment. We got there just before two.

Since we didn’t really have anything personal to ‘work on’ this time, we went in together. I’m not sure what Jane’s secretary thought of that, but we’d done it so many times before it probably seemed normal.

For that matter, I had no idea how many of Jane’s teenage clients stayed with her into college. We were clearly rather unusual clients, any which way you sliced it.

Once we were in her office, Jane and Angie hugged, then Jane and I hugged. After that, Jane said, “Sit! Sit!”

We did, in our usual places.

“So,” she said. “It sounds like everything is going well.”

Angie nodded.

“It really is,” she said. “I think...”

She bit her lip, shook her head a bit, then said, “No. I know it’s because everyone knows. I’m not opposed to having close friends who don’t know, and that’s probably inevitable, but it’s very comfortable right now. We joke about a lot of things most people would not — could not — understand.”

Jane looked at me, and I nodded.

“That’s true for me, too. Both parts. I can see the possibility of Candice and Sherry taking the basement apartment next year. They’d be a good fit. But they won’t know. Barring a slip or some really unexpected development, they’re not on ‘the list.’ If anyone is on ‘the list,’ it’s Mom and Dad, Camille and Francis, and Tony and Jean, but those are all years away, if ever.”

“Mom and Dad first, if any of that happens,” Angie said, nodding. “At least, barring slips or the unknown, like Steve said. I think Mom and Dad deserve to know, but I also think part of that is me imposing my feelings on them. Maybe they’d be happier never knowing.”

“There’s a story from my ex-wife that fits here,” I said. “I told it to Jasmine once. Long ago, before she knew, and I doubt she knows it was based on my ex-wife.”

“Tell,” Angie said, grinning a bit.

“So ... my ex-wife’s father really didn’t like spiders. A mix of fear and loathing, I guess. When they were growing up, she and her sister kept a pet tarantula for two years. Their room was upstairs, and he never went upstairs. Once it got out and was crawling around the room he was in, but they caught it without him saying anything. Anyway, years later, she said, ‘Hey, dad, you must have known about the tarantula, right?’”

Angie said, “I think I see where this is going.”

“You’d likely be right. His response was, ‘Why’d you tell me that? I could have lived the rest of my life never knowing there’d been a spider in the house!’ I don’t want telling Mom and Dad to be like that, and I don’t know how to know if it’ll be a good thing before doing it.”

Angie nodded, and said, “Exactly! They deserve to know if they should know. But, if they shouldn’t know, it’s us ‘unburdening’ ourselves and making them sad.”

Jane nodded slowly.

“Obviously, there are dozens of analogous real-world situations. Yours has the advantage of being something for which you are ‘blameless.’ The spider was against his rules. If you’d, say, stopped ‘behaving,’ that might hurt them to know.”

“Mom would have figured that out in a heartbeat!” Angie said, giggling a bit.

“So you think, but you two are very good at presenting the image you want,” Jane said. “I saw through it, but you were newer to this, I’m a professional who spends most of my time working with people who are holding things back, and I think both of you really wanted something from me. Something you couldn’t get if you held back.”

“Yeah,” Angie said. “All of that. God knows I’d be in a much worse place if I hadn’t had you to talk to about Sharon and other things.”

“The same for me and my ex-wife. And my kids,” I said.

“You could’ve made a case for Sharon, at least. Not in the way we’ve talked about it, but still. The ex-wife and kids? Not even vaguely,” Jane said, chuckling.

“Anyway, that’s where we are,” Angie said.

“And it suits you. It’s a very mature way of looking at the situation. I have no easy answers for you. Most likely they’d be, at worst, like your ex-wife’s parents, Steve. Slightly upset, perhaps, but it doesn’t sound like it was a really big blow or anything.”

“I’m not sure,” Angie said. “It undermines a lot of the ‘narrative.’ I was, in some ways, a mature woman. One with issues. So many issues! But still — when they adopted me, did they ‘save me’ the way they think they did? Did they ‘parent’ me, or did I ‘parent’ myself? I mean, honestly, ‘they’ parented me, but some of that was the other ‘them.’ This Mom and Dad were amazing, and I honestly think they did parent me quite a bit, but they may see it as diminishing what they did.”

“The same for me, only more, probably,” I said. “The marriage was a bit of a train wreck, but I’d grown up and been a perfectly functional adult and raised my own kids from babies to adulthood. I think this Mom and Dad taught me some new things, but it’ll always be somewhat confused with the other ones. Mind you, as far as I can tell they’re the same people. I don’t know of any cross-universal differences.”

“Me neither,” Angie said. “I mean, except the ones we perhaps instigated. They’re very different in some ways, but we nudged and nudged and nudged to make that happen.”

“Gently!” I said.

Jane chuckled, then said, “I’m fairly certain they wanted to be nudged. Helen is a formidable woman, and Sam is quite something himself. If they hadn’t wanted to go along with things, they wouldn’t have.”