Chapter 28

All four of the children began thrashing, trying to push the masks off their faces. I got to my feet, hurried over and, one by one, lifted the masks off and disconnected the hoses that plugged into the wall outlets. I picked up a fresh cloth and began mopping the sweat from their brows and cheeks. First from AJ, then Tink, then I moved across to Rose and finally Belle.

The instant the cloth touched her forehead, her eyelids opened half way and she looked up.

She felt stronger. They all did, but Bell was gaining strength much faster than her sibs.

"What's a abomulnation?" she asked faintly.

I frowned. Abomulnation?

"Dr. Jan told mommy I was a abomulnation. Mommy called Dr. Jan a lot of bad names and then she started crying. It's a bad thing, isn't it?"

"Dr. Jan shouldn't have said that. It was a stupid and cruel thing to say."

"What's it mean Daddy?" she persisted.

"An abomination is something that is disgusting, hateful or unnatural. There's nothing disgusting or hateful or unnatural about you sweetie. Even if you do like to play in mud puddles more than any other little girl I ever heard of." I gave her a wide smile and lightly rubbed the cloth along the side of her face.

I could feel Rose, Tink and AJ open their eyes, rousing themselves out of the depths of sleep, slowly becoming aware of my presence.

The door opened and Peggy, Lilly and Izzy, their arms linked together, filed into the room.

"Are you really my Daddy?" Belle asked.

I set the cloth down on the pillow next to her head and caressed her cheek with my finger tips.

"The one and only. Cross my heart and hope to die." I bent down and kissed her cheek. "Hey, how 'bout I tell you a story?"

Belle blinked slowly and then whispered, " 'kay."

I sat down on the bed next to her so that I could see all four beds. Izzy sat in the chair where I'd been, with Peggy on one arm, Lilly on the other.

"When I was a little boy, my Granddad used to tell me stories, stories from the time before there were books, or cities, or even people."

"If there weren't any people, who were the stories about?" Belle asked.

I smiled broadly. "That is a very good question. Back then, animals were the only people. So the stories are all about them."

"Animals?" Belle wondered suspiciously.

"Well, not just animals ... there were other creatures, like the Great Spirit or the Earth Mother and Sky Father, but most of the stories are about the animal people. The story I want to tell you has some animal people in it, but the main characters aren't animal people. They're very different. Many moons ago..." I started, and Tink's voice interrupted, thin and raspy, but determined.

"That's not how you're supposed to start a story." she insisted.

"That's how my Granddad always began his stories. You have to remember, he was Apache and Lakhota Sioux, and they told their stories differently than the European people told theirs. Different isn't necessarily wrong, it's just different."

Tink looked abashed, so it seemed a good time for a little intellectual healing as well.

"'Many moons ago', that's the same as 'Once upon a time'. They're different way of saying that the story happened a long time ago."

"In a galaxy far, far away." AJ piped. My son loved Star Wars movies. Unfortunately, from my perspective, he always seemed to be routing for the Emperor and Darth Vader.

"Yes, exactly. I chuckled softly. "So, many moons ago, far away from where we are now, a little baby boy was born. Now he wasn't your ordinary, run of the mill sort of baby. He didn't look like the wolf or bear cub or the bison calf or a baby eaglet; he was different. He was strange. He was weird. His family's neighbors thought he was horrible, hideous, disgusting ... a monster. But even though the monster boy didn't look like any of his family, his mommy loved him and at first that was good enough."

"Was his mommy a monster too?" AJ wanted to know.

"No, his mommy was a beautiful angel ... in fact, his entire family was angels. They lived among the animal people and, until the monster boy was born, they were all very good friends."

I paused, pretended to think deeply for a moment and then looked around at my four children. "He really should have a name ... we can't keep calling him 'monster boy'. What's a good name for a monster?"

"AJ!" Rosie burst out, her voice rough and weedy, but filled with childish enthusiasm.

Belle and Tink giggled and AJ scrunched up his face and stuck his tongue out at his sister.

I laughed along with them, watching their mothers out of the corner of my eye. The three of them were watching me with bewildered expressions.

"I think one little monster named AJ is more than enough." I said as their laugher subsided.

"Fred." Belle said quietly. "His name is Fred."

I nodded. "Fred huh?" I furrowed my brow and pulled at my chin. "Yeah, Fred's a pretty good name for a monster. Okay, Fred it is. One day the monster boy, Fred, hardly more than two years old, discovered that there was a little angel girl living in the same house with his mommy and him."

"Was the angel beautiful?" Rose asked.

"All angels are beautiful ... that's how you know they're angels." I told her. "But this angel was special; she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Fred had ever seen. He couldn't imagine anything or anyone being more beautiful. Keep in mind that he was still a baby and didn't know much about the world, or animal people or angels or anything. But when he saw her, for the very first time he knew what beauty was supposed to be."

"Did she have gold hair and wings?" AJ asked. I smiled at my son and watched him as he tried to sit up.

"No, she had long, silky, shiny black hair, and a bandage on one knee, but Fred knew in his heart that she had to be an angel, because when he looked at her his heart filled with so much love that he could hardly stand it. And the moment his heart filled with love he realized that the one thing he wanted most in all the world was to put his arms around the angel and for the two of them to hold each other forever. But he couldn't have what he wanted most, because the angel didn't love Fred. She hated him. She thought he was horrible and nasty and ugly and she wouldn't let him anywhere near her."

"Was he a abomulnation?" Belle asked, her voice gaining in strength and power.

I nodded sadly. "His mother didn't think he was, but pretty much everyone else said Fred was a monster, including the beautiful angel."

"That's so sad." Tink whispered, fighting to keep her eyes open.

"Yeah." Belle echoed."

"Did Fred cry 'cause the angel didn't love him Daddy?" Rose asked.

I nodded. "Sometimes he did. But no matter how much the angel hurt him and pushed him away, no matter how much she made him cry, he kept on telling her that he loved her. Seasons came and went and Fred, the little monster boy, became a bigger, mid-sized monster boy. The beautiful little angel girl grew up too, and she became more and more beautiful with every passing day, but not on the inside. Inside, in her heart, she hated the boy more than ever. She and the other animal children teased and tormented Fred, played mean tricks on him and called him all sorts of bad names. Then, one dark and cloudy day, Fred stopped chasing after the angel girl. He finally had enough of being hurt, so he stopped telling the angel that he loved her. He stopped telling anyone anything at all. He tried to hide from everyone, but most especially from the angel. But because she hated him so much, the beautiful angel started looking for him, and she'd find Fred, no matter where he hid and do mean and hurtful things to him."

Belle's expression grew angry. "Why'd she do that? Fred didn't do anything to her."

"Maybe she had a good reason; maybe not. It doesn't really matter why. Sometimes people do foolish things without thinking about how they could hurt other people. You know what I mean, right? Like, maybe, playing naked in the snow?" All four of them paled visibly. "But that's something we'll talk about later. Back to Fred. Do you know what the strangest thing about Fred was?"

All four shook their heads, relieved that I was brushing off the little escapade that had put them where they were.

"He never stopped loving the angel. No matter how much she hurt him, no matter what she did to him, he never stopped loving her."

"But why?" Rosie asked. "If someone was always mean to me, I wouldn't love them."

"Me either!" Tink exclaimed. AJ just nodded his head and frowned sternly.

"Love is a funny thing. There are times when you can chose to love a person, and there are times when you have no choice at all. Sometimes love just happens. I think that kind of love is the best and worst kind there is. Anyway, in Fred's case, his love for the angel girl was the kind that just happened and there wasn't anything he could do about it. So, a few more seasons passed by and the mid-sized monster boy grew some more and became a pretty big monster boy, but he was very, very lonely and terribly sad. Then one day something really scary happened; something so unbelievably scary that it even frightened Fred, and he ran and hid in a deep dark cave. His mother, the only one who really loved him, tried to get him to come out, but nothing she said could make him leave. He hid there in the cave for three days, with nothing to eat or drink, sitting alone in the dark, convinced that the whole world hated him. He began to think that maybe the animal people were right, that maybe he really was a monster."

"Then what happened?" Tink demanded, rolling onto her side.

"The boy's mother went to the angel girl, they talked and argued for a long time, and eventually she convinced the girl that she was the only one who could save Fred. So the beautiful angel girl went to the mouth of the cave, looked inside and saw the monster boy crouched inside. And, wonder of wonders, he wasn't as horrible as she'd always thought. She tried to coax him out with kind words, but even though Fred saw that she was even more beautiful than the last time she'd come searching for him, and acting much nicer, he still wouldn't come out. He'd been hurt so often that he wouldn't believe a word she said. So you know what she did?"

"What?" Belle asked.

"She said, 'I'm sorry.'"

The four of them looked at me like I was deranged.

"You'd be surprised; those are some pretty powerful words, if you really mean them. And Fred, because he was a monster, could tell that she really did. She told Fred that she was sorry for all the mean things she'd said and all the terrible things she'd done to him. And she was so sad, so sorry, for all the things she'd said and done, that her heart nearly broke, because she realized, much to her surprise, that deep down she actually loved him. Love had just happened to her, the same way it had happened to Fred when he was only a baby. And in his monster's heart, he could tell that she really did love him. After so many years, years of hoping and suffering, he finally got the one thing he wanted most. Fred came out of the cave and the monster boy and the angel hugged each other."

"And they lived happily ever after?" Rosie asked hopefully.

I shook my head. "No honey. 'fraid not. See, the law of the land where they lived said that angel girls and monster boys couldn't live happily ever after. Fred didn't know that, but the angel girl did. And because she now loved him so very much she was afraid that someone would find out and put them in prison, so she ran away and poor Fred ... well, he just didn't understand why she'd run away and left him alone again."

"I bet he was pretty mad." Belle said.

"Yes he was. But it wasn't all the angel's fault, you know. See, he was still very young and hadn't learned how to show her how much he loved her. Maybe if he had known how, she would have stayed, but in the end it didn't matter how much Fred loved her, or how much she loved him, because he was all alone again. Very sad and very much alone." I swallowed loudly, clamping down hard on my personal emotions. "A few more years passed and the day finally came when Fred was all grown up. He kissed his mother good-bye and left home, going to a far-away land where he didn't know anyone, and no one knew him."

"Did the new people think he was a monster?" AJ asked.

"Some did ... but mostly the new people left the young man alone. One night, about a year after he got there, he was invited to a party, and there he met a lovely red haired Eagle woman. She liked Fred, and he liked her and the two of them fell in love and got married."

"I don't like this story..." Belle groused, wrinkling her nose.

"Why not sweetie?"

"Fred and the angel should get married." she pouted.

"You think so?"

"Yeah." she insisted.

"Why?"

"'cause he loved her first."

"Yeah!" Rose and Tink chorused.

"Don't you think it's possible to love more than one person?"

"You mean like you love our moms?" AJ asked, looking slightly confused.

"Uh-huh. And like I love all of you."

"I guess." Belle admitted reluctantly.

"Does the story have a happy ending?" Rosie asked, and then started coughing.

I looked over to where my girls sat huddled together, tears in their eyes. "Mommies, a little help here?"

They scrambled up and scattered, each one rushing to an available bedside. Lilly went to Rosie, helped her sit up, wiped her mouth and held a cup of water to her daughter's lips. Peggy went to Tink's bed, fluffed her pillow and fed her ice chips from the cup on the tray next to the bed. Izzy helped AJ adjust his bed so he could sit up, straightened his bed clothes and held the cup so he could sip water thru its built in straw.

I stayed with Belle, wiping her face, holding her hand, feeding her strength. My daughter ate it up at an amazing rate, far faster and more eagerly than any of her siblings.

"Happy endings," I said once the commotion died down a bit, "aren't as easy to come by as stories would have you think. They take a lot of work. And sometimes you have to live thru a whole lot of sadness before you can be happy."

"What happened to the angel?" Tink asked.

"She met a Badger man and they lived together for a long time. But she didn't love him. In her heart she still loved Fred. And the Badger man knew it, so he was very mean to the angel girl."

"What about Fred?" Belle asked.

"Fred and the Eagle woman were very happy together, and one day they found out that they were going to have a baby. But she and the baby died, and Fred..." I flinched inside, as the memories, the pain, all so fresh and real in my mind, flashed thru me. Belle stared up at me with the most intense, knowing and sympathetic expression I'd ever seen.

" ... Fred, he died inside. His heart went cold, cold as ice and hard as stone. He stopped feeling, stopped caring, stopped hoping, stopped loving. To make things even worse, he learned that his mother had died. For the first time in his life he was totally and completely alone in the world. Alone and, he thought, unloved. So he ran away ... far, far away. Half-way around the world. He had some adventures, saw and did things he never imagined he could or would, and then one bright sunny day he found himself in the middle of a huge wasteland, all alone and tired of living. He was alone, tired and in so much pain that he just wanted to lie down and die. So he dug a hole in the dirt, climbed inside and waited for death to come and take him."

"No!" Belle sighed, tears leaking from her deep blue eyes.

I smiled down at my daughter, tracing one finger along the right side of her face.

"Fred didn't die, did he daddy?" Tink cried.

"No ... he didn't die. As he lay there in the dirt, he heard a voice in his head telling him to get up and go home. Can you guess whose voice it was?"

"The angel?" Belle whispered hopefully.

"The angel." I confirmed. "She wouldn't let the boy die there in the middle of nowhere. She talked and talked and talked ... she just wouldn't shut up. 'You love me, so come home.' she said. 'But you don't love me, ' he said, 'you ran away.' 'Stupid boy, ' she said, 'you know I love you, and you know you love me, so get up and come home. I don't want you to die.' So Fred got up, followed the voice in his head and walked out of the wasteland."

"He was crazy." AJ announced between slurps of water.

I smiled at my son. "A lot of people thought that too, so Whoosh! Fred was flown away and put in a hospital built just for crazy people. There he met a very pretty, very sad Otter girl. Now, normally, Otters are very happy, playful people who spend all their time splashing in rivers and oceans. But this particular Otter girl, she wasn't happy or playful anymore. She was terribly sad and, instead of playing in the river with her family and friends, she decided to swim all the way down to the bottom and never come up. The other Otters pulled her out and sent her away to the hospital so the healers could make her happy again. But the healers couldn't figure out how to make her happy. They had just about given up, when Fred arrived. The Otter girl found that she really liked Fred. She thought he was beautiful and she helped him learn how to feel again. She became his friend, and because he could feel again, Fred became her friend and helped her, because that's what friends do for each other. A week went by and Fred and his new friend met another girl, a very pretty Squirrel girl, and she was really crazy. Now, Squirrel people are kind of crazy to begin with, all jumpy and hyper, mostly because they're always being chased and tormented by the Hawk and Eagle people; that's just the way they are, but this particular Squirrel girl was really nuts." Tink and Rosie giggled, and from the corner of my eye I saw Peggy stick her tongue out at me. I smiled briefly and continued with the story.

"She'd been teased and tormented so much, from the time she was just a tiny little ball of fur, that there wasn't an ounce of love to be found in her fuzzy little body. She'd started stealing love, little bits at a time, from all the other Squirrels, which is why they put her in the hospital, hoping the healers could fix her. But before any of them could try to help her she started stealing love from the other people in the hospital. The really awful thing is, in hospitals like that one, there isn't a whole lot of love to begin with, and the sick people couldn't afford to lose what little they had ... because as everyone knows, when you run out of love, you die. No one knew what to do with the Squirrel girl. But because the voice of the angel had saved his life and because his friend, the Otter girl, had helped him learn to feel again, Fred figured out how to teach the Squirrel girl how to love, and you can't teach someone to love unless you know how yourself. Fred, with the help of his friend the Otter, discovered that all the love that had filled him when he was young was still there, it hadn't gone away like he'd thought, it had only been sleeping, so he took a hunk of it from inside himself, made a magic ring and put it in the Squirrel girl. And because she had her own love now, Squirrel girl wasn't crazy anymore. So she stopped stealing from others and she became his friend too. Little by little, Fred was learning how to show people that he loved them."

"What about the angel?" Belle demanded.

"One very cold winter day, Fred learned where the angel had gone, so his new friends sent him home. When he got there Fred found the angel girl hiding in the very same cave where he had hidden when he was little. The angel was very happy to see Fred again after so many years, but she was afraid, because the Badger man she'd been living with wouldn't let her go with him."

"Did they fight a duel?" Rosie asked eagerly.

I chuckled. It wasn't hard to guess what kind of stories she liked.

"Kind of."

"With swords?"

"No honey, no swords. But Fred won the fight and sent the Badger man away so that he could never hurt the angel ever again. Then he went back to the cave and brought her out and he finally showed her just how much he loved her. Fred gave her a magic ring filled with love and promised that they'd be together for ever and ever."

"And they lived happily ever after, right Daddy?" Tink asked again.

"Well, like I said before, happily ever afters are really hard to come by. But I know this much, Fred still loves her with all his heart. And he always will."

Belle snorted her disbelief.

I looked down at my daughter, who glared back up at me. "You don't believe me?"

"You made it all up." she said unhappily.

"No baby, he didn't." Izzy said quietly. "It all really happened."

"There's no such thing as angels or monsters." AJ stated with the cool authority of a born skeptic.

I cocked an eyebrow and looked him square in the eye. "Sure there are." I looked down at Belle, cupped her cheek with my hand and smiled. "They're all around us, if you take the time to look." I swallowed hard. "You look so much like her." I said wistfully.

"Like who Daddy?" she asked.

"Like the angel; like your mother, when she was your age." I glanced over at Izzy and smiled invitingly. "I could really use a hug."

Izzy smiled sadly, got up from her seat next to AJ and walked slowly towards me.

I gave Belle's fingers a gentle squeeze, released her hand and stood up, opened my arms and pulled Izzy into a bone crushing embrace.

"I missed you, angel girl." I said, lifting her off her feet, burying my face in her long black hair.

" ... missed you too, monster boy." she exclaimed, wrapping her legs around my waist, hiking herself upwards and mashing her mouth against mine.

We held each other like long lost souls for what felt like an eternity, but I think only about thirty seconds or so actually passed before we calmed down and I set Izzy back on her feet.

The children watched us with curious expressions; mismatched emotions twitched thru them. I looked around the room, taking in their feelings, analyzing their looks and body language, and reached a decision.

"I hadn't planned on you guys learning about this just yet, but since the cat's out of the bag we might as well come clean. Belle," I said, glancing down in her direction, "heard something that upset her."

"You're Aunt Izzy's brother, right?" Tink burst out.

I nodded my head slowly. "Yes, sweetie, I am."

Rosie coughed briefly and then smiled. "I knew it! You look just like her."

AJ nodded his agreement. Apparently Rosie's drawing had made the rounds.

"Are you our mommy's brother too?" AJ asked eagerly.

"Don't be stupid AJ." Rosie snapped at her brother.

"Hey!" Lilly said sternly, "I don't ever want to hear that kind of talk from any of you! Words like that hurt, and they hurt the most when they come from people we love. Didn't you learn anything from the story Daddy just told you?"

Rosie sank back in her bed and looked as though she'd been slapped. Tink cringed and pushed back against her mother. AJ ... my little boy, he got an angry, defiant look on his face.

"Rosie didn't mean it, mommy, honest she didn't."

I'd never once raised my voice to my children, never hit them, never even swatted their behinds when they'd done something wrong. I'd always left discipline to their mothers, primarily out of fear. My fear. How could I ever hurt them, even for their own good, when I'd have to feel their pain? Yeah, I know it's a chicken-shit approach to child rearing. But I desperately wanted my children to love me. The last thing I wanted was for them to fear me the way I'd feared my father.