Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 160: A Notable Decision
Saturday, June 28, 1986
We met for breakfast around eight at the hotel restaurant. The hostess seated us almost immediately, and we started figuring out what we wanted to eat.
Within a minute, we had our first big surprise of the trip. None of us had picked up a paper before breakfast, but the person at the next table had. He was holding it up in a way that made the front page headline immediately visible: ‘Supreme Court Throws Out Sodomy Laws’.
Angie, Paige, and I all said some variation on, “Oh, my gosh, we have to get a paper!” before Mom, Dad, and Jas even spotted it.
A few minutes later, we had one, and Angie was reading off highlights of the coverage.
They’d decided Baker v Wade on a 6-3 basis, which was a surprise. Powell, who we’d all guessed would be the swing vote, had sided with the majority, and so had O’Connor. White, Rehnquist, and Burger had voted against. The paper quoted Burger’s dissent, describing it as ‘furious’ and quoting him railing against ‘an infamous crime against nature’ and ‘a crime not fit to be named.’ Rehnquist’s dissent had apparently agreed, but less vociferously, while White hadn’t written one.
The biggest surprise was O’Connor, who had apparently written her concurring opinion right along the lines Curtis had set up. If the police were free to invade one’s bedroom because of a fairly weak moral argument, what else might they find to justify such actions? It was a conservative decision with a liberal result, in other words.
We pored over the article, learning as much as we could. None of us would truly be satisfied until we could get to a law library. That wouldn’t be until at least Monday, and we weren’t sure if they would have the text even then, or at least not in a form we could access.
That said, a call to Curtis later would definitely be in order!
This truly was a big deal. It amounted to Lawrence v Texas almost two decades earlier. I doubted it would change the big picture of late 1980s and 1990s politics around gay rights. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ or the like was still entirely plausible, as were things like the Defense of Marriage Act.
Still, it removed the legal support for a lot of foot-dragging. If ‘gay sex’ was illegal, then it seemed somewhat plausible that one could treat gay people as second-class citizens and even criminals. If it was legal, what grounds were there to do so?
This was a huge ripple, albeit one in a relatively small pond. An entire generation of activists would have to move on to something else. O’Connor might (or might not) be viewed differently by history. I had little memory of whether her opinions on gay rights issues had shifted, but I thought she might have been in the Lawrence majority.
Would there be backlash? Some later case where the Supreme Court would reverse? I doubted it, but who knew? This was brand new ground.
Curtis was going to be thrilled, and justifiably so. His first major decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Not only that, but Curtis admired Justice O’Connor, being a moderate conservative himself. Her concurring opinion would make his day all by itself.
I had to imagine the Professor would have some thoughts as well. Auspicious that we would be seeing him within a few hours!
After breakfast, Mom and Dad wanted to go back to their room to ‘freshen up,’ so we did, too. Just for a bit, though.
We talked about it once we were alone. Angie and I considered this to be a ripple. Paige and Jas didn’t disagree, except for stating the obvious: maybe Curtis had always been ‘destined’ to survive in this universe, and perhaps this decision had been inevitable, given that.
Still, calling it a ripple was reasonable. It was not one we had set out to create, but it was a big one, and that was both important and also cautionary. Every action we took, and especially those directly counter to our first lives, took us another little step away from our first lives and into the new world that was this universe. We hoped those changes would all be for the best, but we needed to remain vigilant. We could make mistakes just as much as anyone could, but ours might matter in a way that many people’s didn’t. Or, at least, matter to Angie, Laura, and me.
After we joined up with Mom and Dad, it was off to the cemetery. I had quietly become the designated driver for the entire trip, it seemed. Dad said I was much more practiced with large cars than he was. There was no doubt of that!
We stopped at a local florist along the way. Mom and Dad left flowers for Dad’s father, and Angie left flowers for Frank. Paige, Jas, and I together left a smaller bouquet at each grave. All of us were quiet, but hardly unmoved.
The thing was, I had always been moved when visiting this cemetery. Even when Frank was just an uncle I barely remembered, and Dad’s father was not even that, but just a man who’d died almost two decades before I was born, they had meant quite a bit to me.
It pointed out again how ‘family’ was much more than blood. No two of us shared blood ties. Sure, Mom and Dad very likely didn’t know about Angie and Frank, but we did. We were all part of a family of choice, and an unlikely one at that. It had taken multiple universes, several tragedies of various sorts, and many lucky choices to bring this group of people together here on this day.
Grandmother and Dad shared blood, at least, but that was it. Professor Berman was just as unconnected to us as we were to each other. And, far more importantly, he was just as thoroughly connected as we were.
We spent only about ten minutes at the graves. None of us needed more time than that. We had connected with those who went before us. One day, we would bring those who would come after us here, so they could hopefully connect as well. The odds were extremely low that any of our children would ever meet Grandmother or Professor Berman, but they could know of them and feel a connection, and I hoped they would.
After that, we were off to the retirement home and to Grandmother and Professor Berman’s apartment. I felt nearly certain it would have been merely Grandmother’s apartment in June of 1986 in my first life, and was halfway convinced that her ‘apartment’ would, in fact, have been a room in the infirmary. She had been sick for a long time before she passed away, after all.
Another way this universe was better. Or, at least, seemed to be better for now. Always worth remembering hubris, and the way things could change, after all.
It was at least possible that Professor Berman would be there for our weddings. For now, we planned on his attending. All of us knew that might not happen, but we very much hoped he would. And, now, it felt like a far more realistic hope than it had a few years ago.
The Professor was the one to open the door after Dad’s knock. He beamed at us and said, “Sam! Helen! Angie! Steve! Paige! Jasmine! It is so wonderful to see you!”
“Let me see them, too!” Grandmother said, though Professor Berman was carefully standing to the side to allow just that.
She bustled forward and met Dad with a hug, following it with hugs for all of the rest of us, as well as greetings. This was, probably, another change. I didn’t remember Grandmother being such a hugger in our first life.
Only after her hugs did we get to shake Professor Berman’s hand.
“Great to see you, Professor,” Jas said as she shook his hand.
“Allan! Please! Call me Allan!” he said, smiling.
The hugs and handshakes confirmed what we knew: both of them were frail, but they were also hanging in there. There’s a difference between ‘frail’ and ‘fragile,’ and they were on the right side of that line for now.
It wasn’t until we had gotten to their small living room before Grandmother said, “I simply cannot wait any longer!”
That cued first Angie and Paige, then Jasmine, to show off their rings.
Grandmother didn’t say anything until she had seen them all, but we could see the tears forming in her eyes. Finally, she said, “They are magnificent, as I knew they would be! I didn’t know how they would look, but I know each of you, and I knew you would make good choices.”
“They truly are wonderful,” Allan said, nodding. “It is a blessing to see them, but it is a blessing most of all because of what they mean.”
“I have said it before, and I will no doubt say it again,” Grandmother said. “Angie, Steve: you could not have brought better women into our family. I am so proud of you, and equally proud of my soon-to-be granddaughters-in-law.”
There wasn’t a dry eye left after that. As I’d said: the odds had been very low that Grandmother would be disappointed, but it would have been awful if, somehow, she had. There was an overwhelming sense of relief, and that brought great happiness with it.
Once the rings had been sufficiently admired — a process that required removing them, since everyone wanted Grandmother and Allan to hold them and see them more clearly — conversation moved on to the weddings themselves. Neither of them was surprised by our timeline.
Grandmother said, “Especially with you in college, taking a year to plan makes a great deal of sense. I was never in college, but I saw how much time it took my boys. My first wedding took less time to plan, but it was a different time, and my mother did an incredible amount of work.”
Allan nodded and said, “I feel the same way about the timing. This way, you won’t be as distracted. That includes being distracted from the weddings! You wouldn’t want to miss some detail because you were too busy with your studies.”
“I certainly hope we can attend,” Grandmother said. “Traveling sounds very difficult, though, at my age. But we will see what we can do.”
“We hope you can attend, too!” Angie said. “But we will have video recordings if you can’t.”
“Thank you, dear,” Grandmother said. “We will see. A recording will be wonderful, either way.”
“It will!” Allan said.
Instead of talking more in their apartment, we went to dinner in the cafeteria. Angie, Paige, Jas, and I shifted a few tables so we could all sit together.
Once we’d gotten seated, the first words out of Allan’s mouth were, “Did you see? The Supreme Court upheld Curtis’s ruling!”
Grandmother chuckled and said, “He’s been waiting to say that since seven-thirty this morning! I made him promise to wait until lunch.”
“It was fair, dear,” Allan said. “Family comes first. But this affects family!”
“Criminals no more!” Angie said, grinning.
She and Paige exchanged a high five, which had even Grandmother chuckling.
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