if you're feeling evil... come on in.
JAMNIA
Published on January 24, 2004 By Christopher Lewis Gibson In Blogging
Before we begin:

Now having crossed the halfway mark of our tale we find ourselves sort of in the woods and in the mists. In a tale with so many conflicting plots and characters: would be monks, gay teenagers, high school sluts, and itinerant saints not to mention Tarot card readers and sisters who grow marijuana in their backyard for public consumption, it is almost impossible not to be confused or disconcerted at some point in time. But I'll trust no one is bored yet! If you've made it this far without being a little confused, you're going well. At this point in the tale the older characters begin to relive memories which have shaped the lives of the younger ones. For a brief span the teenagers fade into the background as Cedric's, Ida's and Ralph's stories are told. As the tale comes to a close the stories of Kevin and Aileen Foster, of Race Cane are revealed in greater detail and the question: can Ashley Foster make it to graduation without gaining an STD takes on a certain urgency....

Yours,
CLG



i i i

It had been a long time for Mick Rafferty, and the deed having been done, he saw no sense in regretting it. He had already had Ashley on the sofa. She admitted that this was why she had come. It wasn’t even really a seduction. She had said, “I’m almost eighteen.” Right now it was statutory rape. But only statutory, the same way fellatio was only oral sex. Basically, they were consenting adults.
Maybe Ashley saw how much he needed her too. Maybe if she had been dying from need of affection and the fear of loneliness, then she saw he had been too.
He spent the whole early morning fucking her in his bed. She spent that whole time raking her nails down his back. They made love and kissed and sucked each others bodies and then fell asleep in the pile of covers and each other’s arms until it was time to get ready for school.
“You shower first,” Mick told her, leaning up in bed and kissing her throat.
“I think you just want to sleep some more, Mr.--” Ashley paused and then said, “That’s not going to work, anymore. Is it?”
He shook his head, smiling. “I don’t think so. But you go shower, and then I guess you should drive to school. I would drive you, but...”
“How would that look!” Ashley completed the thought. She climbed out of bed. Mick wanted to swat her luscious ass, but thought better of it. He lay on his back, smiling, pleased as anything. Hard as a teenage boy.
Observing the pattern of spackle on the ceiling, he realized that this was just the sort of thing that George Stearne had warned him against.
The shower water cascaded down in a roar. Mick heard Ashley singing:

This is the noise that keeps me awake
My head explodes and my body aches!’



“HEY, FOSTER! HEY, FOSTER!” MAKENZIE closed his locker and turned to see Bob Gulo.
“Yes?” he said, looking a little put out.
“When’s the last time you sucked a big fat cock?”
Vaughan, at his locker, heard it, and was trying to shape an appropriate response while he heard Mackenzie say, “Two nights ago, you got a problem with it?”
When Vaughan turned to see his friend and Bob Gulo, Mackenzie was staring him down, and looking hard.
“If you’re good, maybe you’ll be next,” he said. “Were you trying to get on my list? Wanna see if I might come over and help you out too?”
“Hey, chill out, man. I was just fucking with you.”
‘The one thing you won’t be doing,” Mackenzie informed him, “is fucking with me.”
When Bob Gulo had left, Mackenzie looked at Vaughan, tired.
“Can I have your autograph?” his friend said. “You’re magnificent, you know that? You’re even starting to look like an Indian chief.”
“I learned it from you, Dad,” Mackenzie gave his friend a cheesy smile and then they began heading down the hall.
“Can I tell you something?” Vaughan said as they headed into the bathroom.
“Hum?”
“I always worried if you had it in you. To be hard.”
“I didn’t have it in me,” Mackenzie snorted. “Goddamn,” he said suddenly, and turned to his friend, “I am so tired.” he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. “I don’t even look the same. I do look hard. I look mean.”
“You just look like someone who shouldn’t be crossed.”
Mackenzie put his books on the floor beside the sink and turned on the water. He began splashing his face, saying, “I didn’t have it in me. I don’t have it in me.” His voice was muffled by the water he was splashing. He shut it off, pulled his face up and began paper toweling himself. He blew out his cheeks and sighed.
“I hate high school. I’m starting to hate this town,” he said picking up his books. “I wish Ian was here right now. That sounds ungrateful, but I do. ”
“Ungrateful?”
“Yeah, I should just be happy you’re here,” he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to go through this with me.”
“Don’t be nuts,” Vaughan told his friend. “Of course I have to be here with you. Where the hell else would I be?”
Mackenzie turned and looked at himself in the mirror.
“I’ve never really known what I look like. I’m really not bad looking. What if I dyed my hair black and started wearing a lot of old clothes?”
“Then everyone would think you were Tina’s twin and not Lindsay’s.”
“Lindsay’s a fucking bitch and I’m gonna jack the shit out of her one of these days.” Then Mackenzie grinned, “Listen to me, I’m starting to talk like you. And I don’t know who I look like?” he was still looking in the mirror. His image, the hooded blue eyes, the sharply drawn brows, the beginnings of bags, his fine boned nose, stared right back at him, challenging him. “I used to be younger looking. Now I look like one of those bitchy New York models. I bet they’re all gay. I bet they all grew up in Ohio.”


At lunch Mackenzie noticed that Tina had now even dyed the tips of her hair black.
“In mourning?” he said.
“I went to Grandma’s last night and completed the process,” Tina said. “It seemed somehow appropriate. So,” she looked at Ian and him, “how’s life in the war?”
“There’s a war?” Ian said.
“I could hear the gunshots from my bedroom,” Madeleine said, beside Luke. “You know your aunt called last night?”
“Huh?”
“To make sure you were alright and that your father didn’t try anything nutty.”
Ian only nodded and looked tired.
“Are you gonna get your car when you go back to Mom and Dad’s tonight?” Mackenzie said to Tina. Vaughan noticed that he hadn’t said, “home.”
“I’m not going. Plus, the bitch-- by which I mean Ash-- brought the car to school this morning.”
“I wonder where she really was,” Mackenzie said.
Tina did a saccharine impression of Aileen and said, “At Cassidy’s.”
“I wish I had a Cassidy,” Madeleine said.
“You come and go when you want to anyway,” Vaughan told his sister, and she shrugged.
Rod and Derrick Todd were walking out of the cafeteria together when they stopped at the table, Rod to kiss Madeleine and drop a hello by everyone else, Derrick to lean in toward Mackenzie.
“I heard Steve Gulo talking shit this morning. He said you wanted to suck his dick.”
“Really?” Mackenzie’z eyebrow went up.
“That,” Ian commented, “is a dangerous looking eyebrow.”
“I was just telling you to tell you that we all said it was bullshit,” Derrick said. “And Bone Mc.Arthur no less, and Dice-- ”
“He’s my cousin.”
“That’s right--” Derrick remembered. “said they’d kick the crap out of him. Incidentally I said the same thing, and I can’t even fight.”
Mackenzie began to chuckle.
“Did you talk to him? Gulo?” Derrick asked. By now Rod was standing behind Derrick, listening too.
Mackenzie nodded.
It was Vaughan who re - ran the whole story, which Mackenzie had actually forgotten by now.
`When Vaughan had finished, Derrick said, “Well, I just wanted you to know. We got your back.”
“My sister-- ” Mackenzie began.
Derrick flipped a general bird in the direction of Lindsay’s usual seat, shrugged, and headed out of the cafeteria followed by Rod.

That afternoon Tina finally marched off the stage when practice was over and told George Stearne, “You’ve been acting very strange today, sir!”
“Ms. Foster, I don’t know what you mean,” Stearne said, picking up a sheaf of papers and stacking them.
Tina looked flustered and said, “I don’t know either, except... You’ve been... You’ve been real nice to me.”
The goateed man gave his usual mocking smile and said, “Ms. Foster, I pride myself on always being ‘real nice’ to you.”
Tina snorted.
The smile dropped and Stearne looked... sweet, the way he’d been looking all day.
“I was worried is all,” he said at last. “I know things aren’t my business, and I’ve been fighting with that. I’m usually pretty good at staying out of other people’s business, but this is a small school and a pretty small town and so...” he shrugged.
“How much to do you know?” Tina said, at last. “About anything.”
“Well,” George frowned, trying to think. “Everyone knows that Mackenzie is gay. Except, I gather your parents.”
“They found out last night.”
George said, “I had sort of heard that too.”
“From?”
“From the Gay and Lesbian Student Union, naturally. Remember, I run the drama club and the band.”
Tina laughed.
“Though the reputation isn’t deserved,” Stearne went on. “J.D. Amasson’s a walking tragedy, but he’s hardly cut out for theatre, and Jaime Tolliver can’t act to save his life. Great man, though.”
“Well, to fill you in,” Tina said. “Kenzie’s left home and so have I. I’m living with Luke--”
“Luke Madeary?”
“Yes.”
“In the factory? Good, God, Tina.”
“It’s that or my grandmother’s, and I don’t know if I can take my aunts and my cousin, so...”
“But what happened?”
“What happened is when my brother isn’t accepted, then I’m not going to be accepted.”
And Stearne couldn’t say anything against that. He just nodded.
“Well,” he said. “I just wanted to... If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“Thanks,” she said, with a surprised look on her face.
“What’s all this?” Stearne smiled back at her.
“I just didn’t expect you to...” Tina looked for words, then chose to picked her book bag up and sling it over her shoulder.
“Have a heart?”
Tina cocked her head and grinning, she lifted a finger to make a slight difference in the remark.
“To admit to having one,” she said, and then headed up the aisle and out of the auditorium.

The sky was getting dark as George Stearne came into the main lobby heading out into the emptying parking lot. Mick, in his blue sweat suit, whistle hanging from his neck was coming out of the gymnasium.
“You wanna grab a few beers, later?” Stearne said, feeling strangely jovial.
“Can’t,” Mick said. “I got a night.”
“Really?” Stearne’s eyes lit up, and he grinned. Then he said, “You got a woman!”
Mick began turning red, but otherwise, as they headed out of the school, coming down the vacant steps into the almost empty parking lot, his expression remained unchanged.
“Thank God,” Stearne said. “You’ve finally quit sniffing after jailbait--”
“No one ever sniffed around.”
Stearne shrugged, “--and got a real woman. That’s great. That’s great.”
“So what’ve you got planned for tonight?” Mick asked his friend.
“Teacherly stuff. Going over homework, taking my dentures out, drinking chamomile tea. And you?”

“UH, OH GOD! FUCK ME! FUCK ME! FUCK MEEEE!” Ashley moaned as she buried her hands in his damp hair. His face hard, Mick slammed into her against the cheap desk he’d bought at the Salvation Army. He twisted in her and her hands caught his shoulders, pulled down his shirt, went down his back, frantically caressed his ass. He didn’t make any sound while she grunted. He took her off of the desk and put her under him on the small spot of rug on the floor. Then he picked up rhythm. She picked it up with him.
“Not yet!” he put a finger to her lip when he knew she was about to come. “Not yet!” He gasped. “Not... not... Now!” he shouted, strangled on it. They came together, rigid and trembling and then Mick Rafferty lay collapsed across Ashley.
“I want to go out some place,” Ashley said at last, licking her dry lips, caressing the wet small of Mick’s back. “I want to go out some place.”
“But not here in town,” Mick said, panting and rising up on his side.
“No,” Ashley agreed, her breasts still heaving, her ass rug burned.. “Not in town.”

“WHAT?” Ian said that night over dinner.
“Only if you want to, and only if you think it’s best,” Cedric said.
“Don’t go tonight,” Mackenzie said, softly.
Ida was there and Rodder as well. Ida, who had experience in hiding lovers in odd circumstances said, “Well, you could always stay with me.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Lawry,” Ian began, and didn’t know how to press on. So Vaughan did.
“They’d rather stay with each other,” he said.
And Vaughan and Mackenzie looked grateful that someone had said it.
Ida nodded, and said, taking out a cigarette, “and I’ll bet the root of it is that you’d both rather stay with Vaughan?”
Vaughan looked a little surprised.
Mackenzie and Ian both looked at their friend and nodded solemnly.
“If that’s alright, I mean,” Mackenzie said. “I mean, Vaughan’s always been with us, and that may not always be the case but...”
Ida nodded.
“It’s a strange friendship,” Rod commented. “But it works.”

Ida waited until she’d reached Windham Street to make her phone call. She had nothing good to say to Kevin, so she hoped he wouldn’t pick up. The more she thought about it, she had very little that was good to say to Aileen either. But still, Aileen was her daughter.
“Hello,” Ryan’s voice said over the phone.
“Ryan, put your mama on the phone.”
“Is that you, Gran?”
“Sure is. How are things?”
“Not... the way they should be. Can I come over sometime.”
“You can come over anytime you want. You can come over tonight if you want. In fact, tell your mama to bring you over. I wanted to talk to Aileen anyway. Tell her to come right over. Right now.”

When Ryan was off the phone he went to the little desk where Aileen usually sat scribbling notes and paying bills. Her thick glasses were on, and her hair was tied up in a bun.
“What is it, honey?” she said offhandedly.
“It’s Gran. Take me over there.”
“Tomorrow honey, I’m busy.”
“Actually, Gran said she called to speak to you and she told you to come. She said right now, and then hung up.
Aileen became very still, debating her mother’s summons. Ida Lawry never used them lightly, and so she knew she was in trouble.
“Shit,” Aileen said, and pushed her glasses up over her head.
“Get some pajamas, Ryan. And clothes for tomorrow and all that. I’ll be dressed in a few minutes.”

Kevin did not bother to complain. He had a feeling he knew what Ida was going to bring up. Aileen did as well. It took her five minutes to get to her mother’s house. She did not want to see her aunts, who were sitting in the living room, watching TV and smoking cigarettes.
Ida was in the kitchen putting the damage on a chicken ceasar salad with gusto when her daughter and grandson came in. She motioned for Ryan to come and kiss her, and when he did, she said, “Now, go upstairs. I want to talk to your mama.”
Ryan nodded and went upstairs, a little afraid for his mother. He knew the tone of that voice. He’d never imagined that his mama could be in trouble with her mama.
“So now that Ryan’s here, how many of your children are home tonight?”
“Mama, I don’t feel like this.” Aileen reached into her purse for her cigarettes. “I am just too tired.”
“How can you be too tired? You haven’t done a damned thing. Have you even seen Mackenzie?”
“Mama, that’s a lot! That’s a lot to drop on me in one night.”
“He didn’t drop it on you. Ross and Lindsay did.”
“Either way it’s a lot.”
“And me finding out that my only daughter is knocked up at fifteen-- with twins-- isn’t a lot? Housing the boy that got her pregnant and not knocking his head off isn’t a lot? Really, Aileen, you’d think you’d been a halfway model child. Mackenzie is a model child. He’s a damned good child. And you think you’re going through a lot!”
“Is that what you called me here for?”
“Yes.” Then she said, taking out her Newports, “No. No, Aileen. I called you over here to tell you to do right. Not just to Kenzie. But Tina too--”
“That girl--”
“-- is a handful. So what? I heard what Kevin said. That man’s trying my patience more and more--”
“I could fuck up his Tarot!” Meghan shouted her offer from the living room.
Alice said in her mellow voice, “Meg, why don’t we mind out own business?”
“Thank you Ally,” Aileen hissed under her breath.
“You’re welcome,” said Alice.
“And Ashley,” Ida went on.
“What about her?” said Aileen.
“Exactly. What about her? All you know about her is she’s not at home. Go on, Aileen. Honey,” Ida shook her head and put down her cigarette. “I know what it’s like to marry young and try raising children. However it happened you’ve been doing it for eighteen years now. It’s too late to quit now. Your kids need you.”
Aileen sat, looking bitter, her burning cigarette twirling around in her twisting fingers
“Mama, “I’m so tired.”
“I know, baby.”
“With the kids, with school and all. I don’t-- I don’t know how to be here for Mackenzie or Tina. I can’t be here for myself. I don’t-- I need help, Mama.”
“When did I ever say I wouldn’t help you?” Ida demanded. “Mary Aileen Lawry, look around you. This is your home. This is Jamnia, Ohio. Here is your family-- nutty as it is. And your friends, like it or not. Just ask, baby. There’s all the help here that you need.”

“I better take you home,” Mick told Ashley as they were driving south down Willow Parkway.
“I want to go home with you.”
“And I want you to go home with me,” Mick said. “But you’ve got parents and one of them is my co- worker, so I’d better drop you off.”
For a moment Ashley was desperately upset. She wanted to cry. This sort of despair shocked her. She felt like one of those dumb bitches on a Lifetime movie.
My life has become a Lifetime movie, Ashley reflected. It made her giggle a little.
“What?” Mick Rafferty said, offhandedly, turning his careful gaze from the road for only a second.
“You’re right,” she said. The laughter calling her back to her senses. “But you’d better drop me off on the corner of Logan and Michael. I don’t want anyone who might be up checking seeing it’s your car.”
Mick nodded. This girl was smart.
He dropped her off on the corner, but said, “I’ll watch to make sure you get in your house safely.”
“Alright,” she said. It was so dark the moon was hidden behind clouds tonight. The March air through the open car window was a little cold. She leaned in to kiss Mick. He returned it. They went into the back seat of the car and made out like neither one of them had in high school. When it got to the sex part, Mick said, “We shouldn’t.”
Ashley asked, “Why not?”
And since Mick couldn’t come up with a good reason, he unbuckled his belt and began to work his trousers down while Ashley spread her legs for him.

“They’ll be back in a minute,” she told Vaughan. He was sitting up in bed, the moonlight shining off of the white gown of a woman who looked very much like Madeleine.
“I assumed,” Vaughan said. “I’m thinking of telling Kenzie that it’s silly for all three of us to sleep in here.”
“This bed can fit five, Vaughan Fitzgerald,” she laughed.
“But-- ”
“You see things logically on your side. I gave up that kind of logic a long time ago. He loves you. They both do. You think they’re just playing, just trying to not make you feel like a third wheel?
Vaughan didn’t answer.
“Vaughan William Alexander, answer me.”
“Well...” he said, at last. “Sometimes.”
“Well maybe it’s true... But only sometimes. They love you a lot. And you love them. This place is like a bank. Why do you think I keep coming back?”
“Cause you’re my mother.”
Marilyn laughed.
“Well lots of people have mamas and lots of them go in a lot worse ways that I did. I went linked to you. That was one reason you can come to me and I can come to you. But it’s It’s mothers all over this town linked to their children, wishing they could hear them. But you hear me. You see things because you’re ready. When I said this room was like a bank I meant one that holds love. All this love flows in and out of it. The love collects interest and--”
The door opened. Instinctively Vaughan went under the covers. The moon was hidden under a cloud. Just barely, Vaughan saw Marilyn.
“I gotta go, for now,” she told him.
Vaughan gave the smallest of nods to acknowledge her passing.
His heart was full of love. He felt a little like he might cry from the uprush. Ian and Mackenzie were closing the door and crossing the room in their bare feet. He wondered if this is what it felt like for them when they were together. That must have been why they’d left.
“Are you awake?” Ian hissed.
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“You didn’t wake me up,” Vaughan said, which was a lie. The two of them whispering across him to each other had waken him up. Their climbing out of bed had waken him up. Mackenzie climbed back into bed and turned his back to Vaughan.
“It smells like roses in here,” Ian stage whispered.
“Marilyn was here,” Mackenzie said.
“What?” Ian waited for an explanation.
“I’ll explain it in the morning,” Vaughan said.

Luke woke up in the middle of the night and realized that Coconut was not beside him. He crawled out of the makeshift bed and through the room he’d partitioned for himself, up the ramp a little further to the space he’d made for Tina. Funny how it had never seemed this cold here before-- not until this early spring.
He thought he heard Tina giggling in her sleep, and looked to see that Coconut was avidly licking her toes.
“Coconut, stop that!”
The dog looked up at him, offended.
“Just stop.”
The dog humphed, and padded back to its pallet. Luke looked around. There were lots of crates here, a little naked lightbulb hanging from above, and plenty of space. He’d had years to make his space into a house into a home. Tina had just come here last night.
Luke went to his room and pulled one of the blankets off of his bed.
Gently he spread it across Tina, and then looked down at her.
“Have a good one, Lucky Strike,” he murmured, and crossed the ramp that made the bridge over Michael Street. He looked out of one of the dirty old windows. Michael Street stretched below him in the night, the occasional street lights shining up. In the distance the small lights of what passed for downtown Jamnia twinkled from the darkness of the trees and houses.
“Good night, Jamnia,” he said.

After Ida had sent her daughter away, she went upstairs and for a long time lay with Ryan in her arms, letting the boy tell her everything. She’d treasured Mackenzie because he was the first grandson and Ryan because he was the last. Ross had always just been around. Even though Aileen had still been young when she’d had this last child, Ida was sure she’d never bear another one. Six was plenty. And then Ryan had special needs. So Ida treasured him. She held onto this moment of listening to all of his problems and telling him stories as long as she could because he was getting older. Next year he’d be in high school, too big to be babied.
She went downstairs once Ryan was asleep. Meghan and Alice had gone to their rooms. Ida sat alone in the kitchen. In the dark her eyes adjusted to the glass cabinets hanging all around, to the old linoleum, to the white refrigerator that replaced the harvest gold one, the pot of geraniums in the window over the sink that overlooked the sideyard and saw into the O’Donnells. This place had been the house of Ida Lawry’s dreams, though the reality had turned out so differently. This had been the house and the life that had saved her from Broad Street.
Tomorrow morning when she went to Mass she would thank God the way she was thanking him now. Some people wanted to give love so they could pass on what they had received, but sometimes you wanted to give it so that you could pass on what you’d never had. It was a little like making a plant grow with no seed. A miracle. It was a miracle to love a daughter when she had experienced herself as unlovable. It was a miracle to love six grandchildren, though some more than the others--this couldn’t be denied, when there had been no grandmother, or none worth mentioning in Ida’s own picture.
Ida Lawry remembered a kitchen not unlike this one in 1959, on Broad Street, and being sixteen. She’d been in the bathtub when for no reason her mother had walked in with a knife and shouted, “You trifling BITCH!” and Ida had leapt out the tub, wrapping herself in a housecoat, the whole time making a list of all the sins she might have committed and wondering how her mother had found out. By the time she’d been chased in five circles around the house and run all the way to 1133 Crawford Street, she couldn’t think of a one.
As a child, when Cedric had gone by the solemn name of Dominic, he had been a solemn child and he had told her very seriously when she woke up on the sofa of the second story of the DuFresne house, that he was going to own a big white house on Michael Street. Whoever wanted to come would live in it, and whoever needed to hide out could hide out.
And then she liked even better the boy she babysat.
She just wanted somebody to love. Ida could not understand Gladys running off, and she told Evelyn that.
“I just want to love somebody. Not be loved-- that’s nice too. I don’t want to suck love like a sponge, though,” Ida said. “I want to be love, like Jesus.”
“Well just always add ‘like Jesus’,” Evelyn said. “And you’ll never have to worry about giving it up to anybody.”
“I go to an all girl’s school anyway.”
“Yeah, but I seen them rough flat faced Irish boys and those Polocks in your neighborhood, Ida. And they’d have you on your back and marching up the aisle, then sprinkling holy water on some baby’s head at Our Lady of J before you could get the first line of Ave Maria out of your mouth.”
Ida O’Muil laughed, but Evelyn said, “I’m serious. Rule for a good Catholic girl? Leave good Catholic boys alone. Shut your legs and say your rosary. That’s what I say.”
So she had taken Evelyn’s advice. Two years later she had gone up to college on the coast of Lake Erie where some wealthy cousins lived. She wanted to be educated. She wanted to be away from her mother and Broad Street, and she thought she wanted to be with her family. Mam had managed to shoot out another baby, this time by Colonel Foster, though no one would admit to it, and Meghan was turning six and turning into a royal pain in the ass. Privately Ida hoped that one day her younger sister would suffer a tragedy.
All Irish were not alike. Wealth did make a difference. All Catholics were not alike. She hated living up north in Rhodes. She felt like the bastard daughter of a loose washerwoman. She felt like everyone at Saint Clare’s college could smell the boiled cabbage in her clothes, see the worn holes in her socks. This was really the first time in her life that she’d felt less. That she thought that maybe all of her bluntness and her courage was just crudeness.
One day her cousin Laine had thrown back her head, laughed, and said, “Ida, we’ve come along way. We’ve got one of our in the White House, and you look like you just came off the boat from the potato famine!”
So Ida had returned home, and gone to Belmont. She should have stayed here anyway. She rented an apartment, and fell in love with her professor. Professor Lawry had returned the favor. He was cute to her, young for a professor, balding though, and bespectacled. A scrawny little man, but his education had turned her on. She laughed to think about that now. Her sophomore year Professor Lawry had intimated that getting into her pants might be a good idea. Junior year he’d proposed marriage when the first proposal had failed. They married senior year, and he brought her to the beautiful house on Windham where she decided to make all of her dreams come true.
But she’d have to make dreams first.
She did, however, write a long letter to her cousins up north to inform them that they were a back of whores who couldn’t appreciate their past, and she was glad to smell like potatoes and cabbage, and planned on getting good and drunk to really live her stereotype up tonight, and then-- because her husband was half Italian-- he was going to live up his stereotype so that wouldn’t be able to walk straight for weeks.
She wrote all this to her family up north, and then signed the letter:

Your’s,
Ida.

She sat in this very kitchen. It was an August day in 1964. Everything was yellow, the light, the scarf in her hair, her dress. She thought how immature it would be to mail that letter
And then she went right on ahead and did it.

Life went on more or less the same. Meghan was growing into something decent. She was smart mouthed and sassy, but she had to be, living with Mam. And even as a baby, Ally was strange. Meghan-- whose father had probably been Lebanese-- couldn’t resist hanging around Eleventh Street the way Ida had loved Crawford Street.
And things were changing so much! Even little Belmont had had the nerve to stage a prostest. Ida hoped the damned thing in Viet Nam would end soon. Otherwise things moved for the better. Her mother kept complaining about the new English Mass, but Ida was curious. Dick Lawry was Methodist, and except for baptizing her kids, Ida never thought of going back to a church where she couldn’t understand what was happening.
Mary Aileen Lawry was born in 1967 with naturally curly hair and a sweet face.
“She’ll be pretty this one,” Evelyn said. “You can hardly tell she’s Irish.”
Ida only raised her eyebrow at Evelyn.
She was called Aily. The Mary was never to be used except in the worst of occasions. She was, of course, baptized at Our Lady of Jamnia-- like three generations of O’Muils and Brennans and Daleys before her.
One day Cedric had burst through her door with gifts and stories of Louisiana and Miami. He had dandled the baby on his knee and Ida, laughing, said, “Now you can return the favor and babysit too. When and if you’re not in college.”
“I guess I’d better go,” he said, absently rocking Aileen.
“You should. I should have. That’s why I went. Me a woman. You Black. It’s empowering and everything. And it is, I don’t mean to mock it. But sometimes I want a little more.”
Cedric looked at his friend.
“I want to be in love.”
“But Dick,”
“Ahhhh!” Ida threw back her head. “I think I’ve been asleep the whole time I’ve been with him. I wanted someone to love. He was in need of as much love as possible. We don’t fight. He doesn’t cheat on me. I don’t think. But there’s no love in this house. It’s a far cry from Broad Street, let me tell you. But there’s no love here.”
For three days Cedric stayed at the house-- taking care of Aileen-- before he went back to Gladys’s. For months Cedric lived with his mother and Louise. Then, one day, he said, “I gotta go.”
“Where now?”
“Ida, we’re just sitting around in stasis. Things have to change. I need to go get Ralph. I’m going up to Notre Dame and find out what the hell’s happened to my friend!

A week after Cedric had left, Ida had just finished breast feeding when Dick came into the living room.
“Yes,” she said to her husband.
“I feel,” he said. “That we should separate. That... I ought not be here.”
“Oh.”
“Do you mind? If I leave?”
“Would you like to divorce me?” Ida looked down at their baby, gurgling, and completely unaware of her parents’ exchange.
“I--” Dick started. “I think I would. I think I have to.”
“Well,” said Ida, “if that’s what you have to do...”
“You don’t mind?”
Much to Ida’s surprise she said, “No, Richard. I really don’t.”

And that was that.

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