Chapter 101: Acceptance

Thursday, March 24, 1983

Another day, another interesting news story. Reagan had introduced the ‘Star Wars’ defense system. In the end, a lot of money would be spent on relatively insignificant results, though some of those results were militarily significant down the road.

On the other hand, spending all that money might well have been what brought the Soviet Union down in the end. If so, that was an incredibly significant result. Sometimes it’s not whether you achieve what you set out to do, it’s what else happens along the way.

Angie came into my room just after Mom and Dad headed to bed and handed me a folded sheet of paper.

“Sis?”

“Read.”

I opened it and looked. As I’d guessed, it was a note to Sharon:

It’s hard for me to write this. So much has happened, and so much of it was bad. But, if I’d made major mistakes in my life, I would want a chance to fix them, to make amends and seek some measure of forgiveness.

I don’t know how to proceed yet, but I want to. Making things worse for you — even if you accepted the risk — would be wrong.

There is too much to say that can’t be said in a note. Yet, notes make connections.

Be well, and work to find yourself. No one is forever lost.

A

I read it twice before setting it down. Not a hard thing to do, as short as it was.

“What do you think?” Angie said, nervously.

“I think ... if it’s your true feelings, it’s good.”

She nodded a little, biting her lower lip. “Some of them. Part of me still wants to hold her head underwater until she’s dead. I know that’s extreme, but ... twice. Twice! And then what she did to Frank. Twice. Yes, I know it wasn’t her twice, but to me, it was. And I know I’ve never even met her, not really, but I feel like I have.”

“An interesting twist on our usual observations.”

“Yeah. It’s almost like hating you for being Iceberg Steve when you’re not. Or whatever. Other people are different; she might be different, too. I mean, still. This Sharon was so damn fucked up that she left me with a guy that was apparently a child rapist wannabe. She did that to herself, but I fucking well know that junkies do crazy shit. That’s what they do. You can blame them for letting themselves get so hooked, and you can blame them for utter negligence, but you can’t say that she decided to sic that bastard on me.”

I just nodded. She looked at me a second, then took a deep breath.

“Okay!” she said. “I apparently still have a few issues.”

“Apparently,” I said.

“It’s okay?”

“The note is okay. So is you having issues.”

“I think ... I really think ... I can forgive her. If she’s serious, if she’s clean and sober, if she’s genuinely trying to make amends, if she’s fixing her life, trying to do good, be a good person, and all of that. If. Honestly ... if I can’t, I think I’m seriously fucked up, and I need to be better. But I can’t do it all at once.”

“No one expects you to, sis.”

“Yeah. I tell myself that, too, but I also feel like I should. But ... I can’t.”

“You have time. It’ll be a long time before we can talk to her in person, after all.”

She nodded. “And I think I probably have to sit down with Mom and Dad before I do that, just to explain. Even if I’m an adult. They need to know enough of why I’d do that, even if my reasons will partly be contrived BS.”

“There’s no way you could share some of your real reasons.”

“Yeah, no. Not unless we tell them, and that’s a whole different thing. And, even if it happens, the two can’t be connected. We tell them because we tell them.”

“Another thing where we have time, unless the truth somehow outs itself.”

“‘The truth will out.’ Shakespeare had a point, but it’s not inevitable.”

“Definitely not.”

She sighed. “This is tied to our meeting with Jane, of course.”

“I figured.”

“You’ve got your car crash, and I’ve got my relationship crash, I guess. Two intoxicated people crashing into things and wrecking stuff,” she said, sighing.

“And yet we’re here, we’re doing well, and we have every likelihood of continuing to do well.”

“Yeah. True enough. So ... you wouldn’t change it? The note, I mean?”

“Nah. I mean, it’s your life and your words. It works grammatically and all that. The emotion has to come from you. My note would be different, and I’m not ready to write one yet, if that’s ever a thing I’d do.”

She blinked a few times. “I hear what you’re saying, I think.”

“It’s not that much easier for me to forgive, sis, and I’ve never met the woman in either life. She fucked up my uncle and my cousin in my first life, and is probably why that Angie went off to prison. In this life, she fucked up your life. For all that I can make the case that good came out of awful ... it was still awful. I once said that she was dead to me, and I think I meant that in the choking-the-life-out-of-her sense. But, just like you said ... if she’s changed, and I can’t forgive, that means I’ve got issues.”

She scooted over and hugged me, both of us sniffling.

“I love you,” she said. “You’re really the best person who’s ever been in my life. Any of them! Carrie is close, but she was fucked up in her own ways.”

“I love you, too,” I said. “I always will. We were the closest of friends before we found out that we share what we share.”

She sighed. “We’re never fucking this up.”

“We had better not, or the Universe is going to have to do some serious explaining. There’s no ‘best of all possible universes’ that doesn’t have us close.”

“Hear that, Universe? Screw things up and we’re both coming for you!”

I chuckled. “Yes, we are!”

She stretched. “Okay, let me grab my PJs. I’m sleeping here. Have to.”

“I’d never...”

“Yeah, yeah. Be right back!”

I changed into my PJs and visited the bathroom. Shortly after, we were snuggled up and heading off to sleep.

Saturday, March 26, 1983

More and more Brandt For School Board signs were appearing, along with more Gregory signs. Not a ton of either (this was just the School Board, after all) but more. I was hearing positive things from various sources. Still, it would likely be a close race.

The biggest problem was simply getting the word out. Mr. Brandt had spoken at several PTA meetings and some neighborhood association meetings, but most of them wanted the candidates at their April meetings. Bring them in during March and by May no one will remember who to vote for, most likely.

Jas and I had double-dated with Angie and Paige last night. They used Andrew’s bedroom while we took advantage of Jasmine’s. Camille and Francis were out. I suspected that wasn’t a coincidence. Oh, I really doubted swingers’ parties, or at least not many of them, but they probably decided a date night to the movies or the like wasn’t a bad idea on occasion. And, if ‘on occasion’ meant ‘most weekends?’ Still probably true.

Today we were in Mom’s car heading to Jane’s office. I had an accident and a near-accident to talk over. Angie had her note to Sharon. I also had Angie’s note, if there was time for it.

Angie went first, again. Mom didn’t question the order. If we thought Angie should go first, then Angie would go first.

I flipped through magazines, then pulled out the book I was reading (Richard Bachman’s — aka Steven King’s — ‘The Running Man’) and read a bit. I’d always been a fan of the book, as well as the movie (notwithstanding their great differences), and it was fun reading it when virtually no one knew who Richard Bachman actually was. With just a few changes, the book would’ve fit comfortably into the dystopian novels which dominated Young Adult publishing later in my first go-round.

I thought, again, that perhaps the greatest crime I could commit would be to plunder the plots and characters of books written later in my first life. An invisible, intangible theft that robbed authors of their authorship so stealthily that even they wouldn’t know what had been done to them. I wasn’t sure that my writing skills were up to the task, but I was fairly sure that I could bring them up to what it would take.

Oh, I couldn’t rewrite ‘Don Quixote’, as in the Borges classic, but I wouldn’t have to. Many stories would be just as effective (perhaps even slightly better?) with a slightly different voice and twenty/twenty hindsight in place.

Between reading, and contemplating, the hour passed, and soon enough Angie emerged, giving me a grin and a brief hand-squeeze on the way.

I headed back with Jane, giving her a hug once we were in private, then settling in my chair.

“You look much better,” she said. “Or, I assume you do. You look like yourself, to me.”

I nodded. “I’m done being Frankenstein’s Monster for the time being.”

“Please try to avoid that, except at Halloween.”

“I’m doing my best!”

“How are things?” she said.

“Around that, or in general?”

“Both. Angie said that you had an interesting semi-related anecdote, but that was it. We mostly talked about her note.”

I nodded. “Yes. We talked about that quite a bit. It’s got to be her choice, her words, but we agree on it. Aside from that ... things are good. I have no opposition for Student Council, I’ve got a date for Sadie Hawkins, one of my other dating partners has bowed out for now, I’m planning something with the other, I’m told I’ll get a Prom invite sometime soon, I’ll be out of town a lot in April ... that’s mostly it. I have my license back, but the insurance company is dragging its feet, so I don’t have a car. We have a lawyer and we’re suing the other driver, and he’s also working on prying the money loose.”

She smiled. “Busy for everyone, but about the pace I expected.”

“Yeah. So ... the anecdote. Back in my first life, Dad decided it’d be a good idea for me to see a career consultant and take an aptitude test as a way of helping with choosing a major and a college.”

“And you did the same thing this time, but with four of you. Angie mentioned that, along with how things have worked out with your parents learning about Paige.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. That went about how I expected it to go. Mom figured it out, and — with a bit of help from me — came to terms with it, then helped Dad come to terms with it, too.”

“I could say that I’m surprised, and ... I am. Some. But I don’t know Sam or Helen as well as you do, obviously.”

“In a way, it’s similar to my situation. A bigger shock, perhaps — people expect boys to chase girls, even if I actually didn’t — but not different. I didn’t meet their expectations, and they adapted, because the alternative would’ve just built a wall between us. They know I won’t change, and they know Angie won’t change, either. They were able to step back and say, ‘This is who my kids are. I can support them or drive a wedge between us.’ And they’re going to choose not to drive the wedge between us.”

“You know that because of your ex-wife.”

I started to say something, then stopped. Then cocked my head a bit as I thought it through.

“And ... this is why Mom and Dad pay you the big bucks,” I said, chuckling. “You’re right, and I honestly hadn’t put that together.”

“They didn’t like her, but they put up with her instead of risking driving you away.”

“Which perhaps they should have done, though I can be philosophical about it, now that I get a second chance.”

She nodded. “A unique situation.”

“Anyway, I need to put us back on track. Yes, we did that again, the four of us. I don’t know when we did it my first life, but I’d bet it wasn’t the last weekend of Spring Break 1983. It feels like it might have been a fall thing. In any case, I suspect it was probably the same company, same office, but I don’t know. However ... four of us, not one, and even with four of them, it took longer. Everything was different.”