Chapter 49: Late

Sunday, October 23, 1983

I was too late. I’d meant to try something to prevent or ameliorate the Lebanon barracks bombing, but it was here and I hadn’t even sent an anonymous letter.

The practical side of me said that nothing I could have done would likely have made even the slightest difference. It was probably right. Still, part of me was raging over an opportunity lost.

I’d be fine. Several hundred other men wouldn’t. Their deaths were not on my hands, and I knew that. It was still depressing.

I prayed about it in church. I might not have been a good Lutheran, and I might not have believed in God in the same way most of the people there did, but I believed in something, and could at least consider the possibility that that something listened to us. Not that He, or She, or It, or They would do things to fix the messes we made, but They might care, and that would matter, too.

This was the week of the Halloween dance. It was also not an exam week. That made it costume week. None of our costumes were difficult, plus we had Steffie’s costume collection (not elaborate, but helpful) to draw from.

Everyone showed off their Halloween outfits, critiqued each other, and generally had fun. Marsha was in town and watched the show, clapping for us and looking quite pleased. I had a sneaking suspicion that, like many parents, she’d seen growth in Gene that she attributed to Study Group and the friends he’d made.

I often missed the forest for the trees there myself. Gene was just ... Gene ... now. He was the guy I’d mentored in Debate, the guy who’d dated my sister for a year and a half, the guy who’d fallen for Sue, and so forth. Often a jokester, sometimes a prankster, though neither up to Mark and Morty’s level.

And I was right: he was all of those things. What he wasn’t was the Gene I still had in my head sometimes. He wasn’t the guy that’d slept in a bathtub during one of our Debate trips. He’d never climbed from balcony to balcony at the Howard Johnson. Mr. Hannity had never sent him to the office every day for a month, and never would either. He wasn’t a senior who’d never had a significant girlfriend. Plus, of course, he’d never lost his father in a tragic accident. Losing his father hadn’t caused those other things (Or had it? Had he been acting out?), but its absence still made him very different.

He wasn’t on my radar the way many people were. He was ‘Gene’ then and he was ‘Gene’ now, and I had to remember that, while he hadn’t changed as much as Dave Mayrink, Marsha had every reason to perhaps contrast the path he’d been on before with the path he was on now and think that we’d really helped her son out.

We probably had. If so, I was thrilled. Gene deserved the happiness he had now. So did Sue. The two of them were much better together than if they’d been apart.

I talked about the bombing on the way home, after we’d dropped off Paige. Angie and Jas both agreed that there was no blame, and agreed that we most likely couldn’t have done anything. Jas, surprisingly, put it a little more strongly.

“You’re in high school! Admittedly, you’re in a unique position, but you’re still mostly powerless. Changing anything would’ve been a fluke, and might have wrecked our ability to do a lot of good. I will kick your ass if you mope about it, Steve Marshall!”

“Yes, Ma’am!” I said.

She giggled after a bit, followed quickly by Angie.

“I mean it, laughing or not!” she said. Then she bopped my shoulder (lightly!) and giggled a bit more.

“I know you do!” I said.

“Good! We are going to do a lot of good for a lot of people. We can’t fix the world’s problems. Bad things are going to happen to good people. We will probably fuck up sooner or later and inadvertently cause something bad. All we can do is pick up the pieces and move on,” Jas said.

Angie nodded. “Yeah. I feel the same way.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Fine! Not kicking myself!”

“Good!”

Angie slipped into my room around nine fifteen. Not a surprise, but also a surprise, in that I hadn’t expected her tonight in particular. She was clearly dressed for bed.

“Hi, sis,” I said, getting up and hugging her.

“Change,” she said, giggling. “Bedtime!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

I’d pretty much been ready for bed anyway. I excused myself to use the bathroom, but changed into PJs in the bedroom, to a ‘woohoo!’ from Angie.

Once I’d changed, I climbed into bed, then she hit the lights and climbed in after me.

“You’re fine about Lebanon?” she said.

“I am.”

“Good. I was going to whap you.”

“Nah,” I said. “Really. It sucks, but it’s done, and I didn’t cause it.”

“Good.”

“What’s up?” I said. “I don’t think you’re here for just that.”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “Paige. Meaning ... we talked a fair bit yesterday. I was tired by the time we got home, plus I wanted to make sure I knew what I wanted to say.”

“I’m curious, of course. Based on how she’s been, I’m guessing it’s not bad news.”

“No!” she said, then giggled. “Definitely not bad news. Maybe interesting news, maybe not.”

“Tell,” I said.

“Soooo. First, she agrees that we’ve tacitly been in an exclusive relationship, but that we should either state it explicitly or decide that we’re really open. We talked about it — a lot — and we both want it to stay open, mostly along the lines you and Jas have. Technically speaking, we might be slightly more closed, in that we’re a bit more ... well, not strict, but unless it’s a ‘now or never’ and the person is a long-time interest, we’re supposed to discuss it first. I’m pretty sure that’s how you and Jas are, but that it’s not a rule.”

“Yeah. It’s a nuance for us. More of a nice-to-have but not a rule. I don’t think we’re far apart.”

“That’s for guys and girls, by the way. We’re not differentiating, except that with guys, it’s condoms always, for everything except blowjobs, no matter that we’re both on the pill.”

“Blowjobs still transmit things.”

“Condoms — even those flavored ones — are kinda yucky. Seriously, if we’ve got much doubt, we wouldn’t be with the guy. I think they’ll be few and far between, and we’re discussing insisting on testing. It’s not actually a disease thing, first and foremost, it’s a ... well. Birth control fails. Very seldom, but it fails. Neither of us wants to get pregnant anytime soon, so we’re paranoid. Jas getting pregnant would be a schedule change for you two at this point. One of us getting pregnant could be very complicated. The way things stand now, a father who knew Paige and I were a couple could probably take the child away, and maybe — unlikely, but maybe — get us tossed in jail. In a way, I’d seriously like to say ‘bring it on’ and get some really good lawyers to go after the Sodomy Law, but ... yeah, no.”

“I get that,” I said, nodding. “It really would be a schedule change. A pretty drastic one, since we’d either have to rely heavily on a nanny or something, or raising our child as our own little village, or Jas and I would have to be super-careful with our time management so that one of us was always around. But, still ... yeah.”

“Mom and Dad and Camille and Francis would all support you. Not that you’d want them doing day-care, since that’d mean going to college in Houston, but they’re not going to disown you, or even say more than a gentle ‘I told you so,’ followed by hugging you and telling you it’s all going to be fine.”

“We’ve sidetracked, I think,” I said. “I mean, I agree, but we still have.”

“You’re right,” she said. “We sounded each other out and we’re ... well ... no proposal anytime soon, but we’re serious that this is dating with long-term prospects, not passing the time, not ‘lesbian until graduation,’ nothing like that. We love each other. We’re both certain that we might want the occasional guy, but we don’t need a man or a traditional marriage or anything. We both want kids but, if we’re together, we’re agreed that we will raise them ourselves, with the guy involved — if we don’t go the anonymous donor route — but not a parent.”

“A very good sign,” I said.

“You have no idea, really,” she said, sighing. “Carrie and I never had things anywhere near this figured out. Even more ... well, first-life Angie didn’t want to give birth to a child. I was too worried that I’d pass on ... um... something. An addictive personality, a certain amorality, or whatever. Sharon hadn’t shown any signs of redemption, then. I did, but only after a jail term, and only because Daddy Frank and Mom and Dad had done almost all of the parenting. I was pretty convinced that I’d turn any child of mine into either me or, worse, Sharon.”

“And now?”

“I’m backing off the ‘biology is destiny’ thing a lot. This ‘me’ is biologically the same as the old ‘me,’ but I’m not at all tempted to get high. I’ll drink socially, and I’ll probably smoke some pot, but I wasn’t really ever an alcoholic or a pothead. I know what to avoid. I also know that you’ll tell me the first time I’m a bad drunk or do something idiotic when I’m high. Jas, too, and Paige wouldn’t cut me any slack, either.”

“Makes sense.”

“Most likely we’d each have one, but who knows? We’re agreed that we don’t care if we have boys or girls or both, but if there’s a boy we’ll want a guy involved in his life, and that probably means you.”

“You know I’d volunteer for that.”

“We do.”

She hesitated, then said, “That brought up a second discussion. Paige just flat-out asked if I’d be upset if you were the sperm donor, and I said ‘No, of course not.’ She was relieved. I guess she’d thought it might weird me out. Anyway ... I summoned some piece of bravery and said, trying to make it sound joking, that maybe I’d want that, too. She joked back, saying, ‘Of course you would.’ Then she thought about it and asked if I was really joking, and I said I wasn’t, and ... well, we went through the lack of any biological relationship and the fact that we’d met each other when we were both sexually mature and mostly mature otherwise, too. She’s tentatively on board with the idea.”

“A sperm donor doesn’t...”

“I know. It’s a big step from that to just sleeping together. She might have meant using a turkey baster.”

I nodded. “Something I once tried to do for my sister-in-law, by the way. Didn’t take. No Steve offspring, at least not in that universe.”

“I do not know this story!”

“That’s because I don’t think I’ve ever told it. She volunteered to be a surrogate for my ex-wife and me using her own egg. Didn’t take, almost certainly fortunately. Raising kids who were biologically mine and her sister’s would’ve been even more complicated than raising adopted kids with my ex-wife. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time, but I was still secretly relieved when it didn’t take.”

“Still, you tried,” she said, hugging me.

“Fuck... we — my ex and I — tried a lot. Fertility treatments, IVF, the works. The amazing thing about it all is that we never once had a fight about infertility. No blaming each other for not being able to have our own, no her implying that I blamed her, no nothing. It was one of a very few subjects that we never argued about.”

“Just when I think I know everything about that relationship,” she said, shaking her head. “And we’re off track again. Okay, so, the ice is broken. We’ll see what happens next. The big thing is that we’re where I really thought we were, a serious couple seriously thinking about building a life together. We’re also high school seniors, one of whom is really just a high school senior and the other one of whom never had a successful relationship. Baby steps! You and Jas have a huge advantage in that I know you can live successfully with a woman in a long-term relationship and so does Jas.”

“The advantage you two have is that you already have parental support. I mean, not more than we do, but for people coming out as lesbian in 1983...”

“Yeah. Don’t think we don’t know it! Without that, it’d be way too easy for one or the other of us to say ‘Fuck it, I could just find a guy and make that work instead of risking my parents freaking out and having a huge fight!’ Paige handled her side of that earlier on, but you really helped with Mom and Dad.”

“Happy to, and I still maintain that you had a lot more to do with it than I did,” I said.

“And I maintain that you’re wrong, because you nudged Mom in particular to think rather than react. With her in the right place, Dad was going to come around.”

“And you wouldn’t have done that?”

“It would’ve been different coming from me than you.”

“True enough,” I said, then hugged her.