Chapter 43: Pain and Victory and Secrets

I left.

Perhaps that is cowardice. I could imagine what Brian would do—or even my daughter. They would rain hell down on the school district and end up with the principal, the teacher, and the whole school board dismissed. But ... I’m not that strong or that brave. It took two days before I worked up the courage to tell Marilyn.

“You need a lawyer,” Marilyn said. “I’ll call Rex.”

“Don’t. I already contacted a lawyer. I met with him yesterday.”

“And?”

“He said I could raise a big stink and make everyone hate me or just accept that I got dealt a losing hand and get on with life.”

“What did Art say?”

“I didn’t call him. I can’t. I went to the school yesterday and waited for her.”

“Her? The teacher? That’s very dangerous, love.”

“I stayed away until the last minute and watched from off the school grounds until I saw her go leave to go to her car. I followed her to her apartment. She lives in that crappy new apartment building they put up on James St. I beat her to the door.”

“And?”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Slut! You got what you deserved. What they all deserve.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

“Oh, you’re just an unfortunate pawn. I kicked you over so I could capture the queen,” the blonde said.

“What are you talking about.”

“I should be on Broadway! I should be in musicals! Instead, I’m teaching a bunch of shit-assed second graders while she has her own television show, awards, and a dozen unnatural lovers. I can’t get her, but I can destroy you!”

“Elaine?”

“She should have stayed Candy Jones the pole dancer. That’s all she was ever destined for. I, Mercedes Lancaster, already had a star’s name. I should have my name in lights, not her!”

“Wait. That name. You ... You were the girl at the Halloween party who gave Brian explicit permission to bite your ass and then complained because he did it.”

“He doesn’t even keep it a secret. It’s unnatural for a man to have a harem. Just like it’s unnatural for you to be part of one.”

“I’m not part of a harem!”

“Oh? Does it require more than two women and a man to qualify as a harem? You are all the same. It isn’t right. It’s immoral. I told that reporter all about it and all he could do was get thrown in jail. No one is going to throw me in jail. I’m not the one going down for this. Your daughter is one of his ‘girls’. What kind of mother are you? Just another of his immoral women in an unnatural relationship. You stink. I can’t get him, but I can sure get the ones he cares about.”

“You did this to get back at Brian?”

“No! He isn’t worth the time. Candace is the one who’s to blame. Be sure to tell him that. He turned one sentence into a career and elevated her. She doesn’t deserve to be on television. I’m a much better actress.”

“You’re pitiful.”

“Says the unemployed secretary. See if your ménage can help you now. See if your daughter’s lover can save you. You don’t even count.”

“You’re wrong, you know. My ego isn’t wrapped up in my role as a secretary. To me, that was just a job and now that you’ve shown why I lost it, it doesn’t even count. It’s actually kind of funny that you got pleasure from such a stupid act.”

“It wasn’t stupid. I won!”

“You know, you were much prettier before you got so ugly.”

“And then?”

“I walked away.” I pulled Marilyn to me and hugged her. “It’s only a job, beloved. What’s important is that we don’t let Brian know. This is the kind of thing he would go ballistic over and that would simply play into her hand. She’s ... pathetic. There really isn’t a reason to give her any more than she thinks she has. She’ll find it was all empty vanity.”

Marilyn sighed and relaxed into my hug.

“I hate to say this kind of thing, but I don’t think we should tell Hayden, either. White knights run in our family.”

When I kissed Hayden’s lips for the last time on September 7, 2001, I had still never told him the secret. I don’t believe Marilyn had either. I went back to the nursery where I’d worked part time when I first moved to Mishawaka and got my old job back. Since I was available for more hours, they moved me up the chain pretty rapidly and in two years, I was managing the front office. Since I didn’t have children or other responsibilities, I could devote more time to my job.

The three of us created our dreams together and sometimes we lived in them. We never anticipated that it would be so many years before Hayden’s father died and freed him from the family farm. We had the plans for our home and were ready to tell NMH to start building it when his heart attack took him away from us. Marilyn and I clung to each other and once again, little Xan came to take care of us. She was seven years old by then and maybe she understood even better than we did the calming effect she had on people. Her grandpa would have so loved to hold her one more time before he died.

We were already numb when 9/11 came. It meant little more than that there were suddenly a few thousand more people in the world who were walking around in a fog trying to figure out how life could be so unfair. We left the house and everything else behind us and took Hayden’s ashes to Bloomington. We only returned to empty the house and sign the papers for its sale. And Marilyn wrapped me in her arms and begged me to never leave her. And I never will.

I think the whole country was numb after 9/11. Angry. Wanting to do something. And worried sick about our loved ones who were now put at risk. Out of all the clan, only Whitney had enlisted in the armed forces and we all prayed in our own ways for her safe return to us. I think even Brian prayed for her in his own way as he led the children through forms in the sacred space.

“If I thought there was a God who could save and protect my loved ones, I would have hunted him down and killed him after Denise died,” he once said. I had my own anger issues with the Almighty who allowed Hayden to be taken from us so early in his life. But I still prayed for Whitney.

Marilyn and I moved in with Dinita, who had been rattling around in her house ever since Angela moved to Minneapolis for her residency. It was never quite the same with Dinita after Hayden died. She was loving and concerned but too far separate from us to be a full-time part of Marilyn’s and my relationship. We spend most nights in the guest room, only occasionally inviting or being invited to join Dinita. And life went on.

We kept thinking we’d build our own house in the spring but by then the whole Casa del Fuego had moved from the Big House to the Mansion, the home Jessica had built and given to them. We decided to move to the Big House and start a bed and breakfast. It kept us busy. We met a lot of new people. It proved a popular place for students to stash their parents on visits. Gradually, it became known that we had horses available and while we never reached the level of being a dude ranch, people often came for a weekend or even a week that included riding, charged at a separate fee given to Theresa and Larry.

We laughed occasionally about running off to Massachusetts and getting married and Betts even suggested in 2012 that we come to Seattle to tie the knot but we were happy the way we were. Indiana was still reluctant to recognize same sex marriage, even after the federal district court ruled they had to in the summer of 2014. Of course, the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2015 made it a national ruling that same sex couples could not be denied a marriage license or rights as a married couple.

“Do I need to marry you to keep you as my wife?” Marilyn asked as she cuddled me in bed one night.

“I love you so much, Marilyn. I am yours with a marriage license or not. I believe our estate is well-planned and other than that, who can put asunder what we’ve joined together. Again and again and again,” I giggled. And, as old as we were—in our sixties—we still enjoyed our physical relationship. We spent our nights holding each other in the master suite.

There was always a back and forth in the political system; you expected that the president would be a republican for eight years and then a democrat for eight years. I seriously thought that the whole election process could be simplified. In my lifetime, only once had a party been in power for twelve years, when Bush followed Reagan.

I just wasn’t prepared for anything as radical and divisive as the 2016 election. And it was going to affect our village, too. You can’t expect any community to stay the same over the thirty years Corazón had been in existence. We were socially very liberal, but it was also a community of business people who were financially quite conservative. But the anger that was directed at the community was not fiscal. We were a prosperous community, serving a much broader area than our little village. Even though the barn was now entirely taken up by the private academy, the studio still had a presence. We had a number of small businesses and entrepreneurs who called Corazón home. Our downtown was vandalized one night during the campaign with red paint dumped all over the Christmas Tree square in the middle of town. The side of the barn-school was painted with a huge swastika and the words “Die Faggots.”

For a while, even the farmers, who were still the main clientele of the market, café, and bakery, dropped off. Those who came into the café seemed argumentative rather than the welcome and welcoming crowd we’d always had.

“We had gay marriage crammed down our throats. We’re going to take our country back.”

Oh, the vitriol flew freely in both directions. It wasn’t uncommon to see people wearing “Punch a Nazi” T-shirts sitting in the café or bakery.