Chapter 62: Rebirth

April 18, 1981 (continued)

10:30pm

Angie turned up as expected, dressed in a dark top and black jeans, matching the outfit I had. We had a plan. An Easter surprise for Mom and Dad.

We’d gotten a bunch of plastic Easter eggs, filled them with their favorite candies, and stashed them where, we hoped, Mom wouldn’t find them when snooping. That’s why the money was as far back as possible; Mom’s short and getting to that box would be really hard for her. She was much more concerned with snooping in drawers and between mattresses, anyway. I think. She’d either never found the limited amount of porn I had stashed, or had just not commented on it. However, I was pretty sure that, if found, she would have destroyed it, probably without a word. Probably. The porn was a lot easier to find than the money; explaining some cut-out Playboy and Penthouse pictures would be easier than nearly sixty thousand dollars. Much, much, much easier.

Eggs all ready, we headed out the back door to put them out. In the car, in the side yard, along the fence, in Mom’s flower pots. If they didn’t find them tomorrow morning, we’d have to help, because the candy wouldn’t last all day in Houston, even in April.

They would know who did it. We would pretend total innocence. They might not even accuse us. I figured we’d owe up to it, anyway. This was a game I stole from a friend twenty years in the future, who used to ‘egg’ the houses of mutual friends for Easter.

We snuck out, hid the eggs, and snuck back in without incident. I’d give us a good 90% chance of having avoided Mom’s radar; we were extremely quiet and didn’t use lights.

When we got back in, Angie peeled off her clothes down to her bra and panties without a word. I shrugged, stripped to my underwear, then put on my PJ’s. I knew she wasn’t starting anything. Very intimate, sexy, but not sexual. I climbed into bed, lying on my side, and she climbed in, too.

I looked up and down. “Ang...”

“Oh, pooh.” She adjusted my blanket behind her. “I’ll pull it the rest of the way over if there’s any sound at the door.”

“Like I’m going to argue with the view. You have an unfair advantage, sis.”

“That’s what you think. I’m annoyed with the PJ’s you put on!”

“How was your session?”

“Really good. It’s helping. Not that I was a major head case before, but ... well ... I can’t talk about the real whys of Max, but even with what I can say, Doctor Stanton has some good ideas. And we’re digging into the anger at Sharon. I’m trying to find forgiveness. I can never forget, but, forgive? I see why you think it’s a good thing. I’m not there yet.”

“Take your time. Saying you forgive when you don’t is just lying to yourself.”

“Yeah, I get that. How was yours?”

“You mentioned Mel and Cammie?”

“Of course, I did,” she said, grinning.

“It amused her.”

“Well, of course it did. Did you get into Mom’s issue?”

“Yeah. We had a good discussion there. I’m pretty sure I know a bit about how iceberg Steve came to be.”

“Oh?”

I explained about not being held as a child. “Like I said a while back, I think I started to re-engage when I started Debate my first time around. But it was nothing like this. There are a lot of reasons for that, starting with my total lack of comfort with relationships with girls beyond loose friendship and academics. Even so, it melted the worst of the ice. This time? Totally different.”

“Makes sense. Glad I helped,” she grinned and winked.

“Believe me, Steve nine months ago? Or at any point before an embarrassingly large number of years older, the first go-round? A girl like you in my bed wearing that? I would’ve been a mess. Not a drooling idiot; I would’ve been polite and talked to your face. But I couldn’t have handled it.”

“And now Ms. Ames could have you rooming with any of the girls and you’d be all ‘been there, done that’.”

“I haven’t ‘done’ any of the girls in Debate. Even Cammie doesn’t count.”

Whap! “Not what I meant, big brother,” she snickered.

“OK, back to Mom. Mom and I had a talk. I put some things that we both believe are true into religious terms. A hole in my heart where you belong, a hole in yours for me. God taking advantage of a tragedy to fill those holes, and the holes Mom and Dad had for a daughter and you had for a Mom. She cried.”

“That’s really sweet, big brother. And I like it. Except, you know, why didn’t God make the FW a half-decent human being? Or let Daddy Frank live and meet someone nice? Or let Mom and Dad get you a sister?”

“Aside from the whole turning the clock back thing, putting us together the right way?”

“Not the point. That’s after the bad stuff.”

“OK, I don’t want to get very far into theology, but, my take on it, if I start close to the church, is that God made rules. One rule is that we humans get full free will, and we live our day-to-day lives under the rules of nature and biology and all that. Do what you want, take the consequences if you do stuff God doesn’t like, but those consequences come after, not during. Debate all you want why God gives us ridiculously powerful drives to do stuff he doesn’t want us doing, or litters temptations around, or has some rules that are ridiculous; that’s beside the point. Rule: we get to choose. Rule: there are consequences. Rule: follow the instructions or else. So, the FW gets to be an FW.”

“Makes sense. I could’ve gone for that in confirmation class. Even though I still wouldn’t completely agree.”

“Which you passed, otherwise Mom and Dad would nix communion.”

“Yeah, but I was using ‘bullshit rules’.”

“You know I have to ask.”

“Didn’t I tell you this? Like with Higgins. A good quarter of what she says is bullshit. Memorize it, spit it out, forget about it. Don’t argue - you won’t convert her, and she’ll mark you down.”

“Makes sense.”

“Saves trouble. So, where’s ‘bad stuff’ in this? Things going wrong, people dying. Shit happening.”

“One of the big questions people have argued about since there were people. So, Uncle Frank inherits a bad heart, say. Or the FW gets custody of a vulnerable daughter. Or terrorists blow stuff up, or whatever. Cancer. Bad stuff happens. God stays hands off, because if He is always poking at the works, all we do is yell, ‘Hey! God! Fix it!’. He helps us deal with things, and pick up the pieces, and following the rules should help. I mean, if the FW had followed the rules, she wouldn’t have been an FW. Though Aunt Helen follows the rules and is half insufferable. Anyway, maybe God could make it so bad stuff didn’t happen but ... I dunno. I’m OK with saying there’s a reason. And I’m not OK with saying it’s just the Devil being a jerk. Maybe we don’t get better if we’re not tested. That works. Anyway, bad stuff happens; God didn’t make it happen, but He won’t make it not happen.”

“Again, a better explanation than a lot of stuff I’ve heard, theologically speaking. Might just be that you’re willing to be irreverent; that makes it more real. Besides that, obviously, I’ve never met Aunt Helen.”

“You will this summer. Just bite your tongue a lot.”

“Yippee. You know that this went in one ear and out the other the first time, pretty much. I tried to be good. I failed a whole damn lot, but I tried. I was genuinely sorry for the shitty stuff I did. I was one of those shining prison reform stories, Steve. Got myself an education. Nearly had a degree. Would’ve been able to get a decent job. Pissed off the wrong gang of girls. Wound up here.”

She hesitated, then clouded over, sniffling, crying. I pulled her into a hug. “What’s wrong, sis?”

“It ... it’s...” she sniffled hard a few times. “It’s not wrong, it’s ... it’s right. I’ve spent over a year thinking ‘Well, fuck me, I put in all that work for nothing’. But it wasn’t for nothing. It’s all part of who I am now. I just never saw it. It felt so stupid and futile.”

“Aww.” Squeezing her and stroking her back, I held her until she settled a bit. Then laughed softly.

“What’s up, big brother?”

“It just occurred to me that conversations with Doctor Stanton are confidential. I just was thinking - that was what she’d call a breakthrough, but you can’t tell her. But, well, you could. We’re not a danger to ourselves or others, and being sent back through time isn’t on the mandatory reporting list.”

“We are not telling her!”

“Yeah, I know. But the thought amused the heck out of me.”

“I admit it’s funny. But just ‘no’.”

“Having one person to talk to is infinitely better than zero, though.”

“Definitely!” She paused a little. “OK, big brother, you’ve thought about this stuff. I assume before.”

I nodded. “My old best friend and I, while we were roommates in college, debated theology, from a lay perspective, for hours. Many, many hours. Our other roommate insisted we were both wrong and heathens. I still liked our other roommate, Jay, and we were good friends, but you can imagine why we wound up estranged later, even living in the same relatively small city.”

“Dave Mayrink? I mean the best friend, not the other guy.”

“Nah. He and I didn’t go to the same college.”

“In your timeline, big bro.”

“Well, obviously. Anyway, no, different guy.”

“Do I know him?”

“Dunno. Quite possibly.”

“Tell me?”

“Long story. I need to think a lot more, then we need to talk, then I will probably need to talk a lot more.”

“That bad?”

“It’s a big decision. Let me think on it a while.”

“Wait. You’re worried you’ll fuck up his potential future if you don’t do the right things.”