Chapter 51: Que sera, sera?

February 20, 1985, McKinley, Ohio

"Are there any guidelines?" I asked Chancellor Evans.

"You have quite a bit of leeway, but your speech does need to be approved. If you could have it to me by the first week in May, that'll give you plenty of time to write it and still leave time for review and any changes that might be appropriate."

"How long should it be?"

"According to tradition?" he asked with a slight smile. "Or, according to the students?"

"Tradition, I suppose," I replied with a smile of my own.

"Typically between ten and twelve minutes. During my tenure, the shortest one was about seven minutes, and the longest, twenty. I'd avoid that, if you can."

"I think I can say whatever it is I decide I need to say in ten minutes or so," I said, smiling. "Are there any restrictions about me referring to my faith?"

"No, though I would remind you that you're speaking for the entire student body."

I nodded, "OK. Who is giving the commencement speech?"

"It hasn't been formally announced, but former Senator Robert Taft, Jr., the grandson of William Howard Taft. He's the first member of the Taft family to speak here since his father spoke here in 1950."

"When will you make the announcement?"

"Tomorrow."

"May I tell a couple of friends, who I am sure will keep quiet?"

"If you're absolutely sure, yes."

I nodded, "I am. May I ask an unrelated question?"

"Sure."

"There are rumors that Dean Parker is going to return next year. Is there any truth to those rumors?"

"If she is, it's news to me," Chancellor Evans replied. "There are no faculty or administration positions open for the Fall, with the exception of a tenure track position in the History Department and a lecturer's position in the Math Department. My turn for an unrelated question, if I may?"

"Sure."

"I hear you're getting married right after graduation."

"That's true."

"And you'll be ordained as a deacon at the end of the Summer?"

"Also true."

"Do you intend to go on to be a priest?"

I shook my head, "No. That's not my calling, nor is it really compatible with being a doctor."

"Why is that?"

"Any involvement with a death creates a potential problem for a priest or a bishop, even if it's unintentional or an accident. It's a very old tradition in the church. It wouldn't be much of a risk if I was planning to be a GP, but I intend to be an emergency medicine specialist."

"I won't try to figure that one out. My parents were never church-goers, and my knowledge of theology is limited to one course in world religions as an undergrad more than thirty years ago."

"Both ceremonies are open to the public, as it were. The wedding ceremony is actually quite brief, as we basically did half of it when we were betrothed. The ordination, on the other hand, is part of the Sunday liturgical services, so it would be about four hours."

"I'm curious, but I don't think I'm that curious!"

"Well, if you change your mind, the ordination service is on July 28th and starts at about 8:30am with Matins. The wedding ceremony is on May 26th and starts at about 2:00pm. It'll be finished by 2:30pm at the latest. There will be coffee and snacks afterwards at the church. And neither of those require an RSVP."

"We'll see where my curiosity takes me. Let me know if you have any questions about your speech."

"I will. And thank you very much for the honor."

"It's well deserved, Mike. You'll graduate summa cum laude from the Honors program, were invited to the biology department lunches for their top students, have been a very effective Resident Advisor, have helped with student orientation and campus tours, and you've shown very good character. In addition, you demonstrated your public speaking skills; you're articulate and know how to work a room."

I couldn't help but laugh and shake my head.

"And if you had suggested this four years ago when I came to Taft..."

"Then we've done our job!"

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome!"

Chancellor Evans stood and extended his hand. I stood, shook his hand, and bade him 'goodbye'. I headed back to the dorm, where most of the gang was waiting. I couldn't really tell anyone except Clarissa and Jocelyn, so I needed to obfuscate.

"What was it about?" Lee asked.

"He wanted to ask me a few questions. I can't really say what about, but I'm not in any trouble, nor are any of you. I did ask him about the rumors saying that Dean Parker is coming back, and he says that if it's true, it's news to him and that there are no openings for her."

"That's GREAT news!" Sophia declared. "The last thing we need during Senior year is someone like her, making things even more difficult than they already are!"

"She was that bad?" Lara asked.

"You have NO idea!" Melody said. "Dean Anderson is totally cool; Dean Parker was the spawn of Satan! If she had her way, we'd have sex-segregated dorms and no visitors of the opposite sex. To 'protect' the women, you know."

"And who would protect US from the aggressive women?" I asked with a smirk.

"Molest me! Please?" José requested, laughing.

"Later!" Dona interjected, but she was laughing as well. "Behave now!"

"I suppose," José said with a theatrical sigh.

We hung out until dinner, but I couldn't eat because I wanted to receive the Eucharist. When everyone else went to dinner, I headed to church for the Vesperal Divine Liturgy. Father Nicholas was one of the people I knew I could trust with my announcement, but I knew that if I didn't tell Elizaveta first, she'd feel slighted, and rightly so. I took her aside after the service.

"I need to tell you something, but you can't repeat it before Friday. OK?"

"Of course! You know I'll do that!"

"I do. I was asked to give the graduation valedictory speech."

"Wow!" Elizaveta exclaimed. "That's a great honor, right?"

"Yes."

"I'm proud of you, Mike!"

"Thanks. You're the first person I told."

"Not Clarissa?" she asked with an arched eyebrow.

"No, not Clarissa. You."

She smiled broadly, and I was VERY happy that circumstances had allowed me to learn something VERY important without suffering the wrath of my soon-to-be wife. If I had something important to share, I had to share it with Elizaveta first. We couldn't hug because I was wearing my cassock, so I said goodnight, then let Father Nicholas know. After I'd spoken to him, I went out to my car and saw Elizaveta standing by the driver's door.

"Hi," I said.

"Take off your cassock so I can kiss you! Then you can take me home."

I nodded, removed the cassock and put it in its bag in the trunk, then turned to Elizaveta who gave me a very sexy kiss and a tight hug. When we broke the kiss, I helped her into the car, then drove her home, where I received another very nice kiss before I headed back to campus. Once there, I spent a couple of hours working on my paper for my Abnormal Psych class, using Angie's situation as the basis for the paper but without using her name. At about 11:00pm, Clarissa and Jocelyn came to my room.

"I can tell you what the Chancellor wanted," I said. "But nothing can be said before the official announcement tomorrow. I know I can count on you two."

"Of course!" Clarissa said.

"Obviously," Jocelyn agreed.

"Chancellor Evans asked me to give the valedictory speech at graduation, and I agreed."

Jocelyn stared at me, her mouth open, looking stunned. It took her a dozen seconds to regain her composure.

"Mike Loucks? Willingly giving a public speech? I've entered some kind of alternate universe!"

"He's not the same guy you grew up with," Clarissa said. "This Mike is ready to be a doctor, deacon, husband, and father."

"You've done a good job helping him," Jocelyn said.

"Not just me," Clarissa replied. "All of his friends here, including you."

"After I messed him up," Jocelyn sighed.

"No, you didn't," I declared firmly. "I messed myself up. I'm responsible for my own actions, and I made a complete mess of our relationship because I was too weak to handle it."

"But..."

I shook my head and held up my hand, "I wasn't ready for the relationship we needed to have at fourteen and would likely have messed up just as badly, if not worse."

"But if I had stayed, instead of deciding to go to Purdue..."

"Then I would have been the same Mike, with no real changes other than not being a virgin. And that would have been MY fault, not yours. Look, I'm not fatalistic, saying all of this stuff was ordained to happen, nor do I believe 'everything happens for a reason'. As the song says, 'whatever will be, will be; the future's not ours to see', or, if you prefer, in Scriptural terms, 'Do not worry about tomorrow, each day has enough trouble of its own'."

"What I'm saying is that all we can do, or will be able to do, is take each day as it comes, deal with whatever challenges or opportunities it presents, and move forward towards our goals. That is literally all we can do. Worrying about what might happen tomorrow is a useless pursuit because you don't know what will happen tomorrow. I'm not saying we should move forward blindly or fail to prepare, but worrying about it won't change anything. Que Sera, Sera."

"That makes no sense!" Jocelyn protested. "Actions have consequences!"

"Yes, they do, but do we know what those will be with certainty? Did you know all the events which would occur once we made our decision to go to Cincinnati? I sure as heck didn't!"

"No," Jocelyn sighed. "Obviously."

"Which makes two of us," I replied.

"And the proof of both your characters," Clarissa said, "is that you overcame everything that happened and are going to live your lives the way you had planned for the dozen years before you graduated from High School! You guys just took a detour through wild, uninhibited, immensely pleasurable sex!"

"Mike Loucks!" Jocelyn protested.

"What?" I asked innocently because I was, in fact, innocent.

"Jocelyn," Clarissa smirked, "YOU told me that when we talked about me being with Mike on the Gettysburg trip!"

"Uhm, yeah," Jocelyn said sheepishly. "Never mind, Mike."

I chuckled, "More like what passed for that a few years ago."

"What are you implying?" Jocelyn asked.

"That he had his mind blown, along with everything else, by his fantasy lover!" Clarissa laughed.

"That whole thing surprised me," Jocelyn said.

"More growing up," I replied. "Tasha and I both had stars in our eyes and ignored the reality of our situation."

"But aren't you and Elizaveta basically doing what you and Tasha decided was impossible?" Jocelyn protested.

"The key difference is Tasha could never be a clergyman's wife," I replied. "Her relationship with her dad and her experience growing up made that impossible. Not to mention, she wants to start a family on her honeymoon, while Elizaveta is OK with waiting a few years. And finances are quite different, as well."

"Is that really a good reason? The financial one, I mean."

"It's one of many," I replied. "I had to look at the practical considerations. I also had to look at how much time I would have for my wife and consider the proper time to start a family. Those are key things on which Tasha and I couldn't agree, and ignoring them would have been foolish in the extreme."

"Now, THERE is the Mike Loucks I know and love!" Jocelyn teased. "Logical and practical in the extreme."

"I'm over that," I replied. "But that doesn't mean ignoring those things. Romantic love isn't enough to overcome fundamental disagreements about what you want from a marriage."

"Are you in love with Elizaveta?"

"That's a difficult question to answer," I replied. "I love her, but I don't know that I'd call it 'in love'. And here's the practical Mike again — «agápē» is the kind of love we need to make this work. In a sense, when she proposed to me, it was creating 'Team Loucks-Kozlova' to live our lives together, to love each other, to raise a family, and to be faithful Orthodox Christians with a joint ministry in the diaconate. And before you object, were you ever 'in love' with me?"

Jocelyn made a funny face, which expressed the answer before she actually said it.

"No. I just loved you."

"There you go," I replied.

"But you were in love with Tasha, right?"

I chuckled, "Tasha and I were in lust from when she went through puberty. I've only ever really been 'in love' with Angie."

"April?"

"I said the words, but they didn't mean what she thought they meant and probably didn't mean what I thought they meant. I'm positive I've only ever been 'in love' with Angie. That doesn't diminish my love for either of you or for Elizaveta."

"And Elizaveta knows that?" Jocelyn asked.

I nodded, "She acknowledged it when we talked to the Psych Resident at the hospital. She knows I would have married Angie if ... well, assuming the 'real' Angie is anything like the one I knew, which is an assumption I simply can't make. Nobody knows what the 'sane' Angie is like when it comes to relationships. She had problems in High School and before, and unless I am totally misunderstanding what Doctor Mercer and our Abnormal Psych textbook are both saying, those were all symptoms of her schizophrenia, or what might turn out to be borderline personality disorder. But until they negatively impacted her functioning in the world, they weren't a problem, and given how messed up and confused teenagers are in general, not seen as signs of mental illness."

"That is downright scary," Clarissa said.

"Which was exactly how Elizaveta responded. I read way ahead in our textbook, and if you look at the cluster of symptoms, any of us could be diagnosed, except for the fact that all of us are able to function in society. It only becomes classifiable as a mental illness when it creates significant impediments to, and I used this advisedly, 'normal' functioning. There is actually no such thing as 'normal'. 'Normal' is simply a way of bounding behaviors on a graph, and saying the 'average' is what we'll shoot for even though nobody is really average; they're just within the bounds of the graph that allows for a bit of variation and some eccentricity."

"How is your paper coming along?" Clarissa asked.

"Unfortunately, I have personal experience which is making it easier to write."

"When will you call to check on her?" Jocelyn asked.

"I figure Monday so that an entire week has passed. If anything dramatic changes, Father Stephen will call me. And probably after Monday, I'll leave it to Father Stephen because I'm part of the problem. Even if I were in a position where I could care for her, the State of Ohio would never allow me to marry her because she can't reasonably give consent. And because of that, all I end up doing is triggering her breakdowns. It's happened three times now. I think seeing her will do more harm than good until she comes to terms with the situation, if she ever can."

"And if she can't?"

"I really don't want to think about that," I replied.

"If we can go back to the first thing you told us," Clarissa asked, "what do you plan to say in your speech?"

I shrugged, "I hadn't thought about it, really. Maybe it'll be about growing up."

"Given how much you've changed, that makes sense," Jocelyn said.

"And there are enough 'Mike Moments' to keep everyone in tears from laughing so hard!" Clarissa teased.

"Gee, thanks," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Love you too!"

"Maybe WE should write it for him," Jocelyn teased. "You know, From Shithead to Surgeon: the Mike Loucks Story!"

"I'm not going to be a surgeon," I replied dryly.

"Dumbass to doctor?" Clarissa said 'helpfully'.

"I can get this kind of abuse anywhere," I said flatly.

"No, you can't!" Jocelyn said, laughing. "Your sister doesn't give you any shit these days. And, all kidding aside, there's another topic to include — relationships."

"Hmm," I replied, thinking about it, "You, Clarissa, Angie, Elizaveta, Liz."

"Milena, Doctor Blahnik, Doctor Mercer," Clarissa added.

"You might have really missed out on something there, Mik," Jocelyn teased. "A glass of wine and a warm bubble bath with the smoking hot music professor!"

"She did invite Mike to live in the house after graduation!" Clarissa added with a smirk.

"You two are troublemakers!" I protested.

"As if THAT is news!" Jocelyn replied.

"You have a point. Anyway, I need to say my prayers and get some sleep."

We stood up, the girls hugged me in turn and left so I could do my prayers and get to bed.

February 23, 1985, McKinley, Ohio

"It's not fair that I can't come to the concert!" Elizaveta protested after lunch at her house on Saturday.

"I don't like the rule," I replied, "but I understand why they put it in place."

"But Lara isn't eighteen until May!" she protested. "And SHE can be there."

"I know," I replied. "She's a student, and they made an exception for her to live in the dorms because she's emancipated and considered an adult."

"I would get it if they said I couldn't spend the night, but just visiting?"

"You do realize that you can have sex during the daytime, right?" I teased. "And that it doesn't have to be in a bed?"

Elizaveta blushed slightly, "I suppose not. I hadn't really thought about that."

"It's one of the reasons the 'overnight guests' policy was always a joke. The new one, which says no more than two consecutive nights and no more than three days out of seven, makes sense because it prevents someone from basically moving into the dorm and living for free. And from a liability standpoint, at least according to my friend Melody, the age limit helps protect the university. And they've had a few problems in that regard."