Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 157: There Is A Light
Please check my blog. The remaining chapters of Book 6 will post at 2x/week (currently planned for Monday / Thursday), and I do not expect Book 7 to begin posting until April.
As always, thank you for reading, and I always welcome comments.
Friday, June 20, 1986
We had breakfast with Mom, then hit the road for College Station. Paige insisted we play The Smiths’ ‘The Queen Is Dead’, which had just come out. She had already copied the CD to cassette just so I could put it on. Everyone was eager for inexpensive car CD players (or, alternately, the money to afford the sort on the market now).
I was happy to play it. I remembered discovering The Smiths at about this point in my first life. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ was, in my opinion, just about the height of their career. As with every Smiths album, it had its odd, even ridiculous songs (‘Vicar in a Tutu’, for instance), but even those had meaning if you looked for them. ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (the song, not the album) is both ridiculous and sublime in nearly equal measure. Morrisey singing, ‘I know you, and you cannot sing’ was hilarious, partly because he could, in fact, sing quite well when he wanted to, yet one could easily imagine Queen Elizabeth II not finding his voice to be to her liking.
We all sang along in the car. It was hardly the first time for Angie or for me, but Angie knew fewer of the songs. For Jas, this was all brand new. And, for Paige, I think it mattered that we not only appreciated an album she had rapidly fallen in love with, but had liked it long before she was even in the picture at all.
Even if that ‘long before’ was measured after today.
As we had expected, the house was empty when we arrived. Cammie and Mel both had classes until mid-afternoon, and Amy went from work to class to work again. That was fine by us. We caught up with Tony and Cleo, who demanded a great deal of attention as recompense for our absence over the past few weeks.
Checking the messages, the only new one was from Camille. They were at the Amtrak station and would be on their way later today. We were to expect a call tomorrow night from Los Angeles.
We caught up on what mail there was. Angie and Paige tried, in vain, to find anything to clean, then just settled in to read for a bit.
Amy’s second shift at Hullabaloo started at one-thirty, so Jas and I planned to head down there. We agreed to pick up beverages for everyone, including Cammie and Mel.
Jas and I left just after one and took a fairly leisurely walk to Hullabaloo. It felt good to be back on campus, and I said as much to her.
She nodded and said, “This is home right now. It’s not home forever, certainly, but it feels like home. Oh, the house does the most, but the campus feels that way, too. Memorial used to. Now it doesn’t.”
“That makes sense,” I said, smiling.
“In a way, we’re lucky. I’m not sure what will feel like home to Jess. ‘Us,’ she said, and I believe her. But we’ll only cross paths with her a few times a year, in general, I think.”
“She’ll probably have a house. Or maybe houses. Those will, hopefully, feel like home, too.”
“Hopefully!” she said. “It would suck if they didn’t. Mama and Papa’s house still feels like home, and so does your parents’ house.”
“It’s tricky for me,” I said. “Or ... maybe. The last house I lived in might still have that.”
“The one where you broke down crying?”
“Yeah. It’s ... I mean, it’s not home, but...”
“But it was for decades, and that’s hard to give up,” she said.
“Maybe it’s because we just looked at it. I never tried to go in after I left, and we didn’t try to go in. No one said, ‘This is our home. You can’t come in.’”
She giggled a bit.
“Mmm?” I said.
“I was just thinking of you going up to the door. ‘Hello! I used to live here long ago. And, by long ago, I mean in the 2000s.’”
She cocked her head a bit, then added, “‘No, I’m not crazy. Whatever do you mean?’”
I laughed along with her, then said, “Long, long ago and far, far away. Part of the story of my lives.”
She snickered and gave me a hug.
“It’s the story of my life, too. Just the one! I do not want to imagine a scenario where I wind up doing this again, given what happened to you, Angie, and Laura!”
“I very much don’t want that for anyone I’m close to. Mr. McBride can have one, though. And perhaps Phyllis Schlafly and Grover Norquist.”
She snickered at that, grinning.
“All of them are perfectly valid candidates!”
It was hardly a surprise that Hullabaloo Cafe was nearly empty when we arrived. It was summer school and late enough that most people would either be in class or at home. Amy was the only one out front. Trev was nowhere to be seen, and he might not even be taking summer classes. I felt like we would have known if he’d graduated or quit the cafe.
They undoubtedly had someone else helping, since Amy hadn’t started until one-thirty, but that person was probably in the back.
Amy herself was flipping through a textbook, but looked up when we opened the door, making a bell ring.
“Steve! Jasmine!” she said, bouncing a tiny bit.
“Amy!” we both called, heading over.
She leaned over the counter and hugged me, then shared a slightly more awkward hug (based on Jas’s height compared to the counter’s height) with Jas.
“It is so good to see you! I am elated that you have not died!”
“We are elated, too!” I said.
“We are!” Jas echoed.
Amy grinned and bounced a little again.
“Not in the way that is ominous, but we will have to talk once I get home this evening.”
“We definitely will,” Jas said, nodding.
“Very much so,” I said. “We have so much to catch up on.”
“Cammie and Mel clearly had a great time in New York,” she said.
“I wish you could have gone...” Jas started.
“As do I,” Amy said. “But it is not within my means at the moment, and I wish to do things that are within my means. It will mean more to me when I do that. That ... is not to slight the generosity of others. I appreciate that! But not for a milestone like that. Or, at least, not yet.”
That was a very interesting series of observations. It fit completely with the Amy I knew. But the last part slightly undermined the rest, both in allowing for types of things that were beyond her means (if they weren’t major milestones), and in allowing for the idea of a change where even milestones would be okay.
She clearly didn’t mean marriage. That was barely on Amy’s radar at all, and she neither had any marriage prospects nor any apparent interest in finding them. Unless something had changed, anyway.
Curiouser and curiouser, and it added to potential discussion topics. Maybe not all at once, though, unless they were already on Amy’s agenda.
I said, “We would have loved for you to be there, but I agree. It does mean more to do it when you can do it your way.”
“Something also to discuss,” she said, almost smirking. “And, then, there is how much I missed you.”
“And how much we missed you,” I said, with Jas nodding.
The bell rang, and two girls came in, talking with each other.
“We will catch up tonight, then,” she said.
“Absolutely!” Jas said. “But we do have beverage orders!”
“Oh!” Amy said. “Please!”
We ordered, then waited. Once we had our orders safely in drink carriers, we headed home. This walk was less leisurely. We had hot things that needed to stay hot and cold things that needed to stay cold.
When we came in the door, what we found threw us for a loop. Cammie was sitting on the floor, crying, her face red. Mel and Paige were both hugging her, and Angie was (slightly awkwardly) hugging all three of them.
Meanwhile, on the stereo, Morrissey was just finishing up explaining how some girls are bigger than others, and some girls’ mothers are bigger than some other girls’ mothers.
I tried to remember the track ordering of ‘The Queen is Dead’ and...
Oh, fuck.
Cammie confirmed it. She sniffled hard, blew her nose into a tissue Mel was holding, then said, in a shaky voice, “‘It’s not my home, it’s their home, and I’m welcome no more.’”
“I should have realized...” Paige began.
It must not have been the first time, because Cammie said, “It’s fine. I mean it. It’s ... it’s the rest. I have a home. I’m ... I ... well, he might have not meant it the way I do, but there is a light. And it never goes out. It hasn’t gone out once. Really ... there are many lights. Mel, first.”
Mel blushed and hugged a little tighter.
“Then Steve, and then ... all of you. You are my light. You are my home. Sometimes...”
She sniffled again and had to blow her nose before continuing.
“Sometimes it just ... it still sucks. It sucks a lot. Doctor Carly helps so much, but ... sometimes it just fucking sucks. I don’t want to hate them, and sometimes I do. I don’t want to love them, either, but I can’t help that. And I miss them. And I hate missing them. And no one...”
She stopped, blinked hard twice, and then said, “Oh ... fuck. Steve. You ... you probably know what that feels like.”
“Not the same,” I said, nodding. “But yeah.”
“I totally didn’t see the parallel until right now. Oh, dear God! No wonder things sneak up on you!”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Angie...?” Cammie asked.
“Not the same. My feelings about either Carrie or Max aren’t all that similar. Or ... well, heck. Sharon, too, before we got in touch. Laura might have some closer parallels, but...”
“Different,” Paige said.
“Yeah,” Angie said.
“I still should have realized,” Paige said.
“This is good,” Cammie said. “It’s a really good song, and it’ll mean something special to me. I’m glad. I’m even glad it blindsided me. It’s ... it means more this way.”
“Reluctantly, I’ll allow it,” Paige said.
“She means she won’t kick herself as hard as she would have otherwise,” Angie said, snickering.
“I’ll wear cozy slippers. They’re nice and soft,” Paige said, giggling just a little.
Cammie laughed at that, and we all joined her.
Once Cammie was feeling better, everyone enjoyed their beverages and hung out. We were mostly waiting for Amy to get back. Jas and I volunteered to make dinner (burgers and mashed potatoes), and we kept talking while we cooked.
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