Chapter 21: Sister, Sister

WE DIDN’T ALL just go to a hotel for a week, exactly. I took Ronda, Patricia, and Toni to Adrienne’s hotel and we simply walked in. I suppose I should have thought that through before I walked in with Toni, but it was okay. Anna was holding Adrienne in her lap, wrapped in a robe, watching TV. Adrienne wasn’t paying attention to the TV—I’m not sure Anna was—but they were cuddled tightly together. Seeing her reminded me the of the almost boneless cat she’d felt like when I held her.

Toni scrambled to get down and run to the girls.

“Antaddi, you have owie? Toni kiss.”

“Oh, Toni, thank you,” Adrienne said. “Will you kiss the owie on my finger?”

Toni kissed Adrienne’s hand and probably slobbered all over it.

“Honey, let Aunt Adrienne rest with Anna so she’ll get all better and want to play with you,” Patricia said. “Do you have toys here?”

“Antaddi give me dolls,” Toni said. She ran to the bedroom and came back with a couple of baby dolls.

“Remind me to give her some trucks,” I laughed. “She shouldn’t have all dolls.”

“Oh, you should see some of the things she plays with in the store! I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. She puts a doll on the firetruck to go fight a fire,” Ronda said.

Eventually, we decided to order dinner from the hotel restaurant and sat on the floor around a blanket like a hotel room picnic. Ronda and Patricia took Toni home and I stayed with Anna and Adrienne, just pampering our pet, and letting her know how much we loved her.

Adrienne was feeling well enough to go out to breakfast Saturday. Anna and I took her to That Scottish Café where we could be seen with her. Her back was looking better but was still a ragged patchwork. She sat gingerly, but ordered a healthy breakfast.

It wasn’t long before Kathleen and Damien came in and made a beeline for our table. They flagged the waitress and ordered on the way to the table.

“Well, hi. Welcome, have a seat,” I said. Might as well invite them since they were already sitting at our table. Damien was next to me.

“Nate, I have a lot of respect for you, but this rumor either needs to be stopped or you’re going to lose a lot of business,” he said immediately.

“What rumor?”

“That you hit Beth. I saw her face Thursday night. She came to us for shelter.”

“Damien, I will not speak against Elizabeth. If she feels the need to blame me for what happened, so be it.”

“I will speak against her,” Adrienne practically shouted, jumping out of her seat. She turned her back and pulled her shirt up to her boobs. The marks were clear. Then she turned and showed the marks on her stomach. “She did this to me!”

“Fifi, sit!” Anna commanded. Adrienne sat immediately in her chair and hung her head. “It’s okay, honey. Let it go now.”

Adrienne looked up defiantly.

“Not without telling him that I’m the one who hit her when I couldn’t take any more. It was never Nate’s fault nor any of his other girlfriends. She whipped me and I hit her.”

“Holy shit! Oh, Adrienne, I’m so sorry,” Kathleen said, reaching a hand to her. Adrienne sniffed back a tear.

“So am I,” Damien said. “And thank you for clearing it up. A rumor that Nate hit one of his girlfriends like that could really put a hole in your business. I’ll make sure it doesn’t spread any further.”

“Should we cancel her performance at the Black Swan?” Kathleen asked. “Damn it, why did she do a thing like that? I liked her!”

“We all liked her,” I said. “I believe she’s gone a little out of control. She’s had a couple of instances where she’s jumped the rails on us this week.”

“I should have realized that Tuesday night when she went home with us. People don’t usually get that drunk on a single drink,” Damien said. “We had room and it was easier than dumping her at your place. I’m sorry if that helped upset things.”

“I think it’s really something else. She’s showing almost constant signs of being over-stressed by the three months in Las Vegas. Then her sister took her off to Africa. Maybe one day she’ll get herself back together, but I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to have her as part of the family again,” Anna said.

I could hear a low rumble from Adrienne’s stomach as her food was set down. It sounded incredibly like a wild animal growling. She quickly shoved some food in her mouth.

“Will you be here for a while yet, Adrienne?” Kathleen asked. “We never have managed our cup of tea together.”

“I’m flying back to Los Angeles tomorrow. That isn’t because of this. It was when I originally booked my flight.”

“You can stay longer if you want, sweet,” I said.

“It’s better this way for now. And you’ll still come out at the end of summer, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course I will. We’ll get the work done and have time for some fun.”

Adrienne smiled at me and then turned to Anna. Anna petted her hair and Adrienne kissed her on the cheek. Then we all went back to eating.

Kathleen and Adrienne got together that afternoon and I spent a last night with my pet. In the morning, after an early breakfast, I kissed Adrienne goodbye and she drove back to Toronto for her flight to LA.

I went back to the apartment and found things fairly peaceful. We got ready and went to church, then out to Sunday dinner. We decided to drive into London for a special dinner and didn’t get back until late afternoon.

When we got home, it was time for a nap. While Toni slept, the four of us—all that was left of my family—cuddled together in bed, too. We didn’t actually make love. Sometimes just holding each other and softly petting is all that’s necessary. It was the gentle reassurance that we were there and loved each other.

I went down to the studio after naps. The girls busied themselves with tidying things up, both upstairs and downstairs. I had a project I needed to get finished. I’d taken some good new promo shots for Beth and knew she would need them to promote her show next weekend. I was about to start printing when I heard the studio door open and stepped out of the darkroom.

Elizabeth was just standing in the middle of the studio staring around her like she’d never seen it before. She looked over at me and approached.

“Patricia said I’d find you down here,” she said. “I ... um ... wanted to talk about my promo photos.”

“I was just getting ready to print them,” I said. I could feel a weariness in both our voices.

“I ... uh ... I’ll pay for them. I just needed to know how much money to get out of the bank tomorrow.”

“Elizabeth, you know you don’t need to pay for your photos. I’ll get you the whole selection we agreed on. I’ve never charged you for a photo,” I said.

“Still? I mean ... I’m not ... anymore.”

“Still. I’m sorry I yelled at you like I did. I was very angry and should have stuck to the reason. I made personal attacks on you that weren’t called for,” I said. She snorted.

“I came down here to apologize to you. Everything I’ve done since I got here has been inappropriate or thoughtless,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

I’m a big softie. Everything inside me was screaming to forgive and forget and get the family back on track. We’d had hard times, but we were a family, right? No. Not really.

“Elizabeth, we can’t...”

“I know. I’m not asking to be back in the family. There’s no guarantee I wouldn’t go off on one of the girlfriends next. And ... I don’t really fit. I thought we’d be cool in Chicago. I’d be your Chicago girlfriend. But I didn’t expect everyone else to move there. And I didn’t expect I’d start touring all of a sudden. And, I’m not a lesbian. I tried it in Las Vegas. With Rose. Didn’t work. There isn’t anything for me when I’m waiting my turn with you. I just ... thank you for all the good times and for making those great contacts for me in Las Vegas and here.”

“I guess we all learned something. I’m sad, but it’s for the best.”

I looked at her, trying to decide if I was supposed to kiss her now. Instead, I just nodded and went into the darkroom to start printing her photos. She didn’t follow me.

Have you ever noticed that relationships are messy? Well, boys are messy. Yes, yes, girls are messy, too. But girls are a mess inside. Boys are a mess outside. Think about sex—as if you’ve stopped thinking about sex since I walked on stage in a miniskirt. You in the front row owe me a dollar tip.

Girls get messy during sex, but it’s all inside. Boys? Boom! It’s everywhere. You have to shampoo your hair three times.

I broke up with my boyfriend recently.

Yeah. Awww. Thank you. It’s okay. Nobody’s fault.

I shouldn’t lie like that. It was my fault, but I won’t admit it.

Did you ever notice that when everything is going right for you is when your relationship will go to hell? I found out something valuable, though. You can clean a boy’s mess up with a wash cloth and a little shampoo. A girl’s mess? There is no soap made to clean where I’m a mess. I have to come on a stage and spill it all over you. And then I still have plenty inside. So, I’ll go find another stage and another and another. One day, you’ll come into the Black Swan and there will be a cardboard box over on that corner of the stage that says ‘Starr’ on it. And that will be where I live.

Fortunately, most of her hour standup was funnier than that. People really laughed and enjoyed themselves.

I went alone. The girls just couldn’t bring themselves to come and watch our former girlfriend. There weren’t even a lot of people I knew there. Damien and Kathleen had a performance of Merchant of Venice that night, so they couldn’t attend but promised to Saturday night. And Saturday night, the parents would be there.

We’d reserved the entire fourplex where we’d once stayed in a single unit for our four sets of parents, and some kids. Mom and Dad had one unit, but I’d promised Kat she could stay in our guest room. Beth had moved out on Thursday and was staying at the hotel where her parents would be staying. Well, this whole thing had been arranged before the breakup, so we had to deal with it.

Ronda’s parents, Dr. Joseph and Susan May, and her seventeen-year-old brother Danny, were staying in one of the fourplex units. Tor and Elise Berg, Patricia’s parents, were staying in a unit and had already said they wanted Toni to stay with them. Toni was excited that so many grandparents would be in one place for her. And Don and Nancy Marx were staying with Anna’s ten-year-old brother Rick in the last unit.

I was glad Kat was staying with us because I didn’t completely trust Danny. Neither did Ronda. She figured the number of girls who had been in the playhouse to sacrifice their virginity was climbing. She’d had to remind Danny to empty the wastebasket between girlfriends.

When they all started arriving on Saturday afternoon, I was surprised to find Julie Evans with Kat. Mom had figured that with two boys in the party, there should be two girls, so when Kat asked to have her best friend come along, she thought that was reasonable. After all, Julie was the same age as Danny and Rick wasn’t old enough to worry about.

“Oh, where’s this girl going to stay?” I asked in mock surprise when they showed up. Kat had an instant look of panic on her face.

“Don’t worry, Reverend Hart,” Anna jumped in. “We’ve got a guest room and a spare room. We can keep them both.”

She said that seriously, as if there was even a ghost of a chance that Kat and Julie would need two rooms. The girls ran upstairs with their suitcases where Patricia showed them to the guest room.

Toni was in heaven as soon as she saw her best friend and immediately wanted to show Kat her artwork, her toys, and the whole store. That’s where they were when Elise and Tor walked in and Toni forgot all about Kat.

We all trooped over to the four-plex and found Dr. and Mrs. May having a chat with Don and Nancy Marx as they unloaded their cars for the week. All except Tor and Elise decide to go see Beth at the Black Swan, even though she is no longer a girlfriend. I begged off, but Anna and Ronda were roped into going with their parents.

Patricia and I left Toni with her grandparents and went home to have a little quiet loving before the rest of the family got there.

I didn’t really want to get into the whole thing with my parents about why we had broken up with Beth. They didn’t even know Adrienne, and saying that Beth beat up some unknown person put everything on her as an evil person. I didn’t really believe that. I did think that she was a little unstable, but sometimes I thought I was, too.

“We forgave each other, but the rift is too big for us to mend it,” I said. “We all decided we were better off without Beth in the family. I still need to talk to her father about buying her share of the property here in Stratford, but I don’t foresee us getting back together again.”

“Forgiveness is a misused word, I’m afraid,” Mom said. I settled in for a sermon. “I’ve come to believe that only God can truly forgive. It is beyond the capacity of the human heart and mind.”

“What do you mean, Mom? I thought we prayed forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Aren’t people supposed to forgive others?”

“This is a hard one,” she said. “I thought I was good at forgiveness. And just as you are not betraying the confidence of what happened, I won’t either. But in my life, I’ve tried to forgive some very powerful sins against my person, my psyche, my very spirit. And I still find myself, many years later, having the stray thought of that event cross my mind and becoming alternately hurt, angry, bitter, vengeful. You see, true forgiveness is only possible if you forget. If you can’t forget, you can’t forgive. And I have never met a human being who could forget a grievance against another person. We don’t have the ability to pluck that memory from our minds and destroy it.”

“God can forget things?”

“The mind of God is much vaster than I ever thought I comprehended before. When God forgives, He expunges the very memory of that act and it is as if it never happened. We humans try to mimic his act, but never really forget. I spend part of every day calming myself from old memories and hurts so that those memories don’t control my responses, but even then, I know I fail more often than not.”

I thought I’d put that one on one of my Reverend Mother Superior posters if I ever got around to making them. ‘If you can’t forget, you can’t forgive.’ ‘I was called to minister, not to judge.’ ‘Too much Bible study can ruin your faith.’ ‘The minister’s home is a home first.’

I thought that if Mom kept having these deep thoughts, maybe she’d be a bishop one day. The United Methodist Church hadn’t gotten that far, yet.

Jordan, Nadia, and Adele came into the store on Wednesday. I knew I’d have to face them. I’d been close to Beth’s parents, especially Jordan, ever since I moved to Chicago. I didn’t know how that relationship would survive the breakup.

“So this is the shop?” Jordan said as he came in. His women were immediately busy examining everything on the shelves and choosing a few little things to take to Ronda at the cash register. “Looks nice.”

“This is it, Jordan. I can’t say it’s an incredibly profitable business, but the authorities seem to be happy to have us with a couple of open businesses in town.”

“I can well imagine. Immigrants in any country are welcome as long as they aren’t taking a national’s job and are contributing to the economy,” he said.

“Would you like to see the studio?”

“Well, yes! Nadia and Adele can entertain themselves shopping for hours,” he laughed. He sounded pretty jovial, but that could change when we were in private. He’d once threatened me with a shotgun if I ever hurt his little girl.

“Times are changing and I’ve had to expand into some color photography,” I said. “I’m getting a lot more people who want a photo, but aren’t interested in modeling, so I don’t have releases for their photos. Still, we get a few.”

“Yes. Well, you know I’m a collector of the black and white. Can’t do everything. I can see on some of these where the color is a real plus to the image. There are so many different colors in that costume that would be lost in black and white. That one, though, I’d like a print of,” he said pointing to the photo of Min in her tracery. It was a very sexy shot.

“I can do that. Do you want to take it back with you or do you want me to ship it home?”

“If you can ... Wait. That one is signed by you and two others. Who?”

“Leanne is the makeup artist and Min is the model. It was the kind of work we thought all three of us should sign. We did the same thing with the ‘Min the Gold’ print. We each have one copy signed by all three of us.”

“And no others?”

“No. Those are the only ones that will have all three of our signatures. I’ll sign any originals that I print, but otherwise, none.”

“I’ll take that one,” Jordan said. I was shocked. The black and white of Min with Leanne’s tracery was matted and framed, like the dragon lady. Anna had priced it at $1,500. ‘Min the Gold’ was priced at $2,500.

“You’re sure, Jordan? I mean, nothing else of mine that you have comes close to that. Of course, I’ll split that with Min and Leanne, but it’s still a lot of money.”

“All right. You convinced me. I’ll take them both. Nadia!” he called out into the shop. Nadia quickly came to the studio with Adele right on her heels.

“Yes, Jordan?”

“What do you think of these two. Are we ready to add a bit of color to our collection?”

“Those are beautiful! Can we really buy them, dear?”

“Come now, I’m not a skinflint. I think we can afford to drop some money on our favorite photographer.”

He had to know that Beth and I had broken up. But he was acting like he was still a fan of mine.

“Besides,” he continued, “imagine what they’ll be worth once the artist is dead.”

Oh, shit!

Adele gasped.

Jordan turned and grinned at me.

“I’m thinking a long-term investment here. You don’t need to rush the dying part. You know the old adage: It takes two to paint a masterpiece. One to put paint on the canvas and one to hang the artist.”

“I’d rather not get to that last part,” I said.

“I’d rather you didn’t either. I’d miss our drinks and smokes together. Speaking of which, I know all the families are in town, but do you have time to get together one evening this week?”

“Oh, well, not tomorrow because I’m taking my sister to the theatre. And Saturday is my folks’ last day in town. I guess that just leaves Friday night,” I said.

“Why don’t we meet at that bar in the Windsor House around nine. We’ll just have a drink and unwind after a long week. What say?”

“That sounds good, Jordan. I always like spending time with you.”

“Well, have those two wrapped and sent over to us. I’ll go find Anna and settle up with her.”

“Nate, are you painting, too?” Adele asked. She was standing in front of a couple of my sister’s paintings that I’d hung in the gallery.

“Oh, no. It’s my sister who paints. I told her I’d hang a couple of her pieces and see if anyone was interested.”

“I’m interested,” Adele said. “I love this.”

The picture she was staring so intently at was one of Julie on Kat’s rocking horse. It wasn’t as demure as her early paintings of her friend, but was a full-on Lady Godiva pose. I had to wonder if Julie’s breasts had grown that much. Actually, when she’d hugged me the previous night before she and Kat went to bed, I could pretty well tell they had.

“Um ... I can call Kat downstairs to talk to you about it. I know she and Anna set prices.”