Chapter 35: A Rosy Outlook

Thursday, October 24, 1985

Angie had news in the morning. She hadn’t shared it with anyone but Paige until now.

Jane had called yesterday. She had a new message from Sharon’s therapist. Jane hadn’t opened it, wanting Angie’s permission to do so. Angie was going to say yes to Jane reading it, but to hold her thoughts for now. We would pick it up on Saturday. Angie would read it that night, but wouldn’t discuss it with anyone but Paige until Sunday.

I was glad she was handling it that way. Things with Sharon were Angie’s business first and Paige’s second, so Paige should be the first to discuss it with her. The rest of us — even me, who had known about Sharon far longer than Paige had — were further away from it now, and it had to stay that way. We could help, but Sharon was Angie’s birth mother and Paige was Angie’s partner.

I gave Darla a brief call in the evening. Checking in after a date is always a good thing, in my opinion, and that was especially true of one that ended like last night’s had. One that ended in back-seat fireworks would have needed a call even more!

She was fine, and happy I called. We tentatively planned another date for Friday of next week. Wednesday or Thursday were also possible. Amy would get one of those (or, possibly, Friday). We could sort it out next week.

I was also finally able to talk to Marshall. Not only had he been involved in the win, he might have been the hero of the game. His tackle for loss of Mississippi State’s quarterback with under a minute remaining hadn’t been the last play of the game, but it forced a desperation pass attempt on the next play. Another Tulane player intercepted it (for their fourth interception of the game) and that ended it.

Ripple? No one would ever know, most likely, unless there was someone like us who had been far more of a Tulane fan than Angie, Laura, or me.

Friday, October 25, 1985

Today’s front-page headline spelled out an outrage I knew was coming, but hadn’t remembered in detail.

Louie Welch had gone on the local ABC station (coincidentally, the station Marvin Zindler was associated with, though Marvin wasn’t involved in this incident) to talk about his four-point plan for dealing with the AIDS ‘epidemic’ (a term many medical professionals disagreed with). The host had introduced Welch but then moved on to cover a helicopter crash. Due to a technical error, Welch’s microphone remained live and he was heard to say “One of them is to shoot all the queers.”

It was, of course, a media sensation. Welch attempted to downplay it, saying, “I apologize, but I don’t think I had the gay vote anyway.”

That was certainly true enough, given that Welch was outspokenly anti-gay, but this had turned off a number of middle-of-the-road voters in my first life. As Welch said, one could compare it to Reagan’s unintentionally aired comment about bombing Russia. On the other hand, Reagan was not in the middle of a campaign at the time, nor were there many Russians in the voting pool.

In my first life, this incident had later been considered a fairly important turning point in the Straight Slate election. I hoped history would continue to repeat itself.

Jas, Angie, Paige, and I hit the road right after our last class on Friday. We had the cards we’d bought. Cammie and Mel had added a card, and Candice gave him one as well.

Tonight was going to be a ‘parents’ night.’ Angie and I were staying with Mom and Dad, Jas was staying with Camille and Francis, and Paige was staying with Tony and Jean.

Tomorrow night we would shuffle around, with Jas and me at Camille and Francis’s and Paige and Angie at Tony and Jean’s. Mom and Dad would be left out, but they got both of us tonight, so it seemed to be a reasonable compromise.

There was a reason for all of this, of course. One Jas and Paige couldn’t be told, though they might well have guessed. If the timing worked out, this let Angie and me talk to all of the parents in person. The thing was, Jas and Paige knew we were keeping their parents in the loop and gave us the privacy we needed to do that.

The parents were all going to the Rice game with us, but that wouldn’t be a good time to talk about anything. Still, everyone got to see everyone.

We were skipping church with Mom and Dad on this trip. I really enjoyed seeing Doctor Ott, but we had other plans, ones Mom and Dad could support. The four of us were planning to attend the late service at the Unitarian church not far from Mom and Dad’s church. That would serve as a first scouting mission to the place we might get married. Cart before the horse, perhaps, since we weren’t actually engaged, but we weren’t the sort of people who had to follow a strict order of things.

Cammie and Mel were driving down tomorrow morning, as were Candice and Sherry. Unless something changed, Cammie was staying with the Rileys. Candice and Sherry were staying with their respective parents for this trip. While either set of parents would probably have let them share a bed, they figured it made more sense for them to split up for the one night.

Instead of dropping anyone off first, we went right to the house, catching Mom and Dad watching TV. Dad was surprised, and very pleased, by our birthday wishes and all of the cards. We hadn’t mentioned it, so I imagined he figured we might have forgotten.

We left after about half an hour, stopping at the Seilers’ first, then the Nguyens’. Angie and I went in to talk to (and hug!) the parents for a bit at both houses. Once Paige and Jas were with their parents, Angie and I headed back to Mom and Dad’s house.

When we arrived, Mom and Dad were clearly on their way to bed. We talked for about half an hour, but didn’t bring up the change in our winter plans. There would be time for that in the morning when they were more awake.

Angie and I wound up reading for a couple of hours, then got all snuggled up in my bed.

She sighed deeply, rubbing noses.

“Think Mom has a birthday surprise for Dad?” she said, grinning.

“La la la...”

“You’re happy they’re still in love!”

I chuckled and nodded.

“Oh, I am! I just don’t want any details.”

“Think I do? I wouldn’t be in my room even if this wasn’t a much better alternative.”

“I approve of that,” I said, still chuckling.

“Still pretty awesome, big brother.”

“This, or...?”

She shifted and said, “The whole thing. Mom and Dad being who they are. Us, being who we are. Them letting us be us. Our helping them be better versions of themselves.”

I nodded.

“Obviously, I agree. I think ... well ... like we’ve said, maybe we didn’t get there the way I thought we would, but it’s hard to argue with results.”

“I thought we might be pushing ... well, a bunch of things ... too hard, way back when. But I was ... kinda ... thirty-two-ish ... plus being just a trifle toughened up. Not exactly the fourteen-year-old troubled orphan they expected. I just wanted to be treated like ... who I wasn’t?”

She giggled a bit at that.

“I mean, saying you want to be treated like an adult when you’re clearly not, and there’s no reason to expect you might be ready for it, is pretty silly. Especially since I was ... well, I was an adult in prison, but also not.”

“It worked,” I said.

“It did! Anyway ... I just ... I don’t want to lose sight of how awesome this is or start taking it for granted. Sure, God or Whoever might have put us in the bestest universe ever, but we still worked for what we got, and we never took Mom and Dad for granted or anything. Better to remember that and stick to it.”

“Yeah. And maybe it’s the bestest universe ever because we’ve stuck to that.”

“Oh, definitely! We could have fucked things up so many ways!” she said.

“Let’s get some sleep. Engagement planning tomorrow.”

She giggled.

“They’ll love the new plan. They might also figure out that we’re not telling them everything, but...”

“But they expect that.”

“They do.”

We kissed, then rubbed noses.

“Always,” she said, softly.

“Forever,” I said.

And, with that, we were off to sleep.

Saturday, October 26, 1985

As usual, Mom had breakfast on the table when we got up. She didn’t seem at all surprised that we’d slept in my room. Our not sharing a bed would probably be more surprising.

We were both nearly certain that Mom knew, to her own satisfaction, we had never crossed the line. Not here, not anywhere. She might know we’d crossed some lines, but not the one that mattered the most to her.

With years of hindsight, it had occurred to me that our having serious girlfriends might also have reduced the level of worry. Had we given our bodies to each other years ago, would we have found other romantic partners? Or would Mom be stuck with the fact that her two kids were likely to be essentially married?

In any case, any further conversation about that was for the future. If Angie decided to approach her about my fathering her children, we would have quite the discussion. If she didn’t, it might never come up.

And, if Angie and I slept together after we were married, that was a matter for Jas and Paige, surely, and not an issue for Mom. She would have agreed, I felt certain. Lutheran teaching was clear: once a child is married, parents need to butt out of their personal lives.

Angie didn’t dawdle today. This was a discussion for both of us, so we were both up and eating fairly promptly.

Dad was (as he often was) off at his desk going over the bills and his other weekly record-keeping chores. That had been his Saturday morning ritual for more years than I could remember.

Mom, Angie, and I caught up over breakfast. We told her about our classes, and she told us about some of what she and Dad were up to. I couldn’t tell if she and Dad were truly different in this universe than in my first life, or if it was that she was more open to sharing since I was in a serious relationship. Either way, it was clear that they were enjoying the empty nest. They’d always been deeply in love, and I imagined they must have resumed ‘dating’ once I moved out in my first life, but I hadn’t known that. They’d never shared things they routinely shared now.

Once we’d finished, we moved to the living room, where Dad joined us. As it had before, this reminded me of visits in years to come — Mom and Dad in their side-by-side chairs and Angie sitting beside me on the couch where (once upon a time, but never again) my ex-wife had sat.

Oh, it wasn’t the same couch. That couch was still in Grandmother’s apartment. Still, it was both familiar and enormously different.

“We’ve been thinking,” Angie said. “I know we’ve only shared some of our winter plans, but probably that’s good, since we’re changing them.”

“Oh?” Mom said.

“What’s up?” Dad said.

“So...” Angie said. “Our original plan was to go to L.A. for a few days, then surprise Paige and Jasmine with a trip to Hawaii instead of coming back here. Like, not telling them until we got to the airport.”

Mom nodded, and said, “We’d gotten that far with it.”

“Steve and I talked about it, and ... well. I’ll let him tell you.”

I chuckled and said, “It was Angie’s idea, but sure. I completely agree with it, so...”

Mom and Dad both laughed at that a bit, and Mom said, “You two agree much more than I once thought you might!”

That got us both laughing, too.

After we’d quieted down, I said, “Our new plan is go to Hawaii first. We’ll spend some time all together and maybe some as the two couples. After that, the official plan is that we’re stopping in L.A. on the way back to go skiing. We still want to do that, but ... well, they’ll immediately think of Disneyland if we stop in L.A., and we’ll add that to the itinerary.”

“That sounds good,” Mom said, with Dad nodding along. “We had a lot of fun there. More than I expected, with two teenagers! You two really enjoyed it quite a bit.”

“This is where we’re planning a surprise,” I said. “And we’ll need your help for it.”