WE WENT OVER TO BLAIR AND ANGELA’S that weekend. They lived in a walk-up that reminded me more of my cheap old place than my current apartment, but it was nicely furnished, clean and a pretty good size. They had two bedrooms and were already well into the process of converting the second one into a kid’s room. There was still a filing cabinet and an old tower PC in there, but they’d painted the walls light yellow with a cartoony wallpaper border, and a crib was ready to be set up in a corner. It was terrifying.
I’d brought a dozen beer and a fancy sparkling grape juice that I hoped Angela would like. It was Johnny’s idea — he’d won rock paper scissors best of three and opted to bring snacks, but then told me what to buy for drinks. It was a good thing he chose to bring the food: I would have showed up with a couple of bags of chips, but Johnny brought a bunch of little canapés and desserts that he got from the gourmet deli near his condo.
“Wow,” Blair said, looking at the spread Johnny laid out, “fancy stuff.”
Johnny shrugged. “I’ve finally moved on from PB and J,” he said, patting his still solid gut.
“This is a nice place,” I said, looking around the apartment. “You been here long?”
“A couple of years,” Angela said. “There’s a good school nearby, too, so I don’t see us moving soon.”
“I gotta admit,” Johnny said, arranging the snacks artfully on a plate Blair found for him, “it’s pretty weird hearing you guys talk about schools and stuff. I mean, it still seems like just the other day we were in school.”
“Yeah,” Angela said. “I remember thinking that thirty would be so old. Like, I’d be practically dead at thirty. But I still feel like a seventeen-year-old ... or at least I did until a couple of months ago.” She grinned.
“So,” I said, “I don’t want to be rude, but was this a planned thing?” I looked pointedly at Angela’s belly. “I mean, you don’t really seem like the kid types.”
Blair laughed. “Things change, Gumbo,” he said. “I think I’ve always been the kid type, really. When Debbie was little, I used to love playing with her.” He turned to Johnny. “I was always envious of you, having Mary around. Little kids are so much fun.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Johnny said. “Shit, if I’d known I’d probably have given you every last one of my G.I. Joes to take over babysitting duty.”
We all laughed. “What about you?” I asked Angela. “You going to be one of those moms with a baby strapped to your back while you get arrested for picketing the G8 summit?”
“Probably,” she said, grinning. “It was kind of a hard decision, bringing a new life into this piece-of-shit world we live in.” Her smile faded. “But humans survive; it’s what we do. I’m trying to make the world a better place, not just roll over and volunteer for extinction.” She popped a tiny quiche in her mouth. “So, to answer your question, we weren’t trying, exactly, but we weren’t trying not to. We’re both pretty stoked about it, though. It’s going to be quite a trip.”
“No shit,” Johnny said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “So, Blair, what is up with your mom? That party was nuts.”
Angela rolled her eyes and walked off to the bathroom. “Mom,” Blair said, equal parts disgust and affection in his voice. “She’s got some interesting ideas. My sister Debbie just got her PhD. She’s an endocrinologist — literally curing diseases for a living. And all my mother can talk about is when she’s going to find a man and start pumping out kids. It’s crazy. I mean, my mother’s a professional herself, but none of that matters anywhere near as much as breeding.”
“She must be happy with you two, then,” I said.
“She’s thrilled,” Angela said, coming back from the bathroom. “It’s just a shame she doesn’t recognize anything else. I mean, all we’ve really done so far is screw, and you’d think we’d won a joint Nobel Prize for fixing the environmental crisis and instituting world peace. Like having children is the only purpose a person has in life and the rest is just dressing.”
“I could buy it better if she’d given more of a shit about us growing up,” Blair said with soft anger.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You guys did all right.”
“Sure, we had lots of stuff,” Blair said. “Mom and Dad just bought us things to make up for the fact that they were never around, then that they were fighting all the time and then that they got divorced. There’s more to being a good parent than throwing lavish birthday parties and Toys ‘R’ Us shopping sprees.”
Angela reached over and squeezed Blair’s shoulder. “We’ll do better, honey,” she said, and he nodded gravely.
“Anyway, enough of my childhood baggage. What’s up with you guys?” Blair said. “Something interesting must have happened in the last decade.”
“You’d think,” Johnny said. “You probably heard that I’m a lawyer. I work for the province as a prosecutor. I don’t do criminal trials, so don’t even ask. It’s not really that interesting to talk about, but I think it’s fun.”
“That’s great,” Angela said, then turned to me. “How about you?”
“I’m an engineer,” I said. “I work for the city.”
“Cool,” Blair said, sounding less than excited.
“Oh, Gumbo’s just keeping the interesting stuff under wraps,” Johnny said, grinning at me. “Tell them,” he said.
“What?” Angela asked.
“Well,” I said, my face getting hot, “I found my birth mother.”
“And that’s not all,” Johnny added. “She comes with a whole family. They’ve been hanging out.” He jerked his head at me. “He even took Shirley and Dom to meet them!”
I SPENT THE NEXT HOUR FILLING BLAIR AND ANGELA IN on meeting Kim and the rest of them. Blair thought it was weird, Angela thought it was cool and Johnny was Johnny. It was Angela who brought up the elephant in the room.
“What about your father,” she asked, “your birth father? You haven’t mentioned anything about him.”
I sighed. “She won’t talk about him,” I said. “Everyone I ask says they don’t know anything and she’s made it clear to me that the topic is off limits. He’s not listed on the adoption papers and there’s no record of his name on any of the hospital papers. It’s maddening. I’m sure she knows who it is. I mean, she was sixteen. How many possibilities could there be?”
“Jesus, Gum,” Angela said. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe she was raped? Maybe it was a stranger and she doesn’t know who he is.”
“Or maybe it’s even worse than that,” Johnny said darkly. “Sounds like her family was pretty out there. You know those crazy religious people — Lot’s daughters and all that.”
“Okay, that’s just disgusting,” I said. “And I can’t believe you guys are talking like this about my mother!” I heard my voice rising.
“I’m sorry, Gum,” Angela said, her voice soft. “We’re not trying to be offensive —” she glared at Johnny “— but it is a real possibility that there’s a very good reason Kim doesn’t want to talk about the man who got her pregnant.”
“You’d be surprised how common it is,” Blair said. “We see it at the agency time and time again — young women, abused, assaulted, becoming pregnant. It’s real, Brian.” He looked so earnest, like it was just the two of us in the room. I felt my heart rate go down and realized that Blair must be very good at his job. “You’ve got to remember that this is just as emotional for Kim as it is for you,” he went on, “possibly more so. I know you want to find out about your birth father, but you’ve got to try to be sensitive to her situation, too.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “It’s just so hard, knowing that the information is there but I can’t get at it.”
“Yeah,” Angela said. “But look at how much more you know now than you did a year ago. It’s amazing the difference a little time can make.”
“And,” Johnny said, looking around the room at the empty plates and beer bottles, “sometimes how little difference it can
make.” The tension in the room lifted and we all smiled at each other. In the dim light of their second-hand halogen lamp I could see the reflections of all our seven-year-old faces in their eyes.
24
DEARLY BELOVED
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SCORCHING-HOT August days we rarely get on the Island. The Civic didn’t have air conditioning — I couldn’t justify the additional cost for the one or two days it gets really hot. However, as I drove up island in the plus-thirty-degree heat and felt myself sweating through my shirt, I wished I’d put up the extra couple hundred bucks.
I’d booked a room at one of the local motels, knowing that the chances of staying sober at a wedding were close to nil and not wanting to impose myself on Kim’s yard with another rented tent. I could cab it back and forth between the motel and the house, where the wedding and reception were taking place. Thankfully, it also meant I’d be able to change into my suit at the motel.
I pulled into the parking lot with a couple of hours to spare before I needed to be out at Kim’s. I figured it was a fifteen-minute cab ride out to her place, so I shucked off my sweaty driving clothes and jumped in the shower. An hour later I looked like a new man — or at least a clean and besuited one. I had the front desk call me a cab and went down to the small lobby to wait.
I wasn’t late to the wedding, but there were already a ton of people there by the time I arrived. It made the family camp-out look like a quiet night in. I almost didn’t recognize Kim’s place. The camping area had been redone as an outdoor chapel, with seats, an aisle and a flower-strewn covered area where I presumed the couple would be standing. I saw Rob standing near the aisle with a bunch of programs and I started walking toward him. I was a few steps away when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked down into a face that at first I didn’t recognize.
Time had been kind to her. She looked not so much older as more confident, more alive. Her hair was soft and bounced around her face wildly. She wore a burgundy pantsuit that somehow managed to look sexier than a little black dress ever could. I, on the other hand, must have looked like a moron. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open and my eyes were bugging out.
“Brian Gumbo,” she said and flung her arms around me for a hug. “I don’t believe it.”
“I ...” I stammered. “This is ...”
“What are you doing here?” we both asked at the same time. The resulting laughter broke me out of my trance and I said, “Seedy. You look great. I can’t believe it.”
“I know,” she said. “How weird. I’m a librarian now. I work with Terry,” she explained, then lowered her voice. “And we went out before she hooked up with Chuck. I’m not exactly Chuck’s favourite person, but what can you do?”
“Oh,” I said, wrapping my head around what she was saying. “Oh, sure, yeah.”
“So what about you?” she asked. “How do you know these guys?”
“Chuck’s mom, Kim,” I said, “she’s my birth mother.”
“No way,” Seedy said, her eyes wide. “That’s so twenty-first century. I’m glad you finally found her. When did you two meet?”
“A few months ago,” I said.
“Whoa,” Seedy said. “You move fast, pal. I don’t know if I’d be joining the fam that quick.”
“I’m not,” I said. “But the timing just worked out ... you know. Terry invited me, really.”
“Yeah, she would,” Seedy said with no small amount of affection. “She’s a real global community person, you know, we are all family, that kind of thing.”
“Seems like it,” I said and found that we’d managed to make it to the last row of seats.
“This is a strange combination,” Rob said, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and Seedy.
“Gumbo and I go way back,” Seedy said. “University days.”
“Small world,” Rob said. “So, we’re not doing sides — I mean, what do you say, ‘bride’s side or bride’s side’? So sit wherever you want back of the first couple of rows.” He handed us a couple of the folded sheets that served as programs, and we walked up the aisle. I have to confess that walking up the aisle at a wedding with Seedy P next to me seemed very, very surreal.
I WASN’T REALLY SURE WHAT TO EXPECT. Neither Terry nor Chuck had seemed particularly religious, but when I flipped open the program, the officiant was listed as Rev. Jack Dorcet. The plan was for Terry and Chuck to walk down the aisle with their parents and meet at the front. Then the whole thing would probably take only a half hour before the party started. Seemed good to me.
In a few minutes I saw the little man in the brown suit from the rehearsal come to the front and stand under the canopy. He wore a suit that was obviously different from the one he’d had on previously, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you in what way. Seedy nudged me with her elbow. “Show’s starting,” she stage whispered.
I heard Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” being piped over a poor-quality PA and everyone rustled as they turned to look behind them. I saw Rob and Jeannette walk toward us with a man and woman I didn’t recognize. My eyes skipped down to the program and saw that they were Terry’s brother Andrew and her friend Elena. They reached the small man and the canopy, turned and looked expectantly down the aisle.
I turned and felt my eyes bugging out again. Terry stood with her parents, in a typically weddingy cream-coloured froth that managed to look natural on her. There must have been an entire grove of flowers woven into her hair, and she was beaming at us all. It was pretty much what I expected.
Chuck, on the other hand, was a shocker. I’d just kind of assumed she’d be wearing a pantsuit or a tux. Instead, she wore an emerald-green satin dress, strapless and snug, that hung all the way to the grass. She wasn’t a tall person, but it made her look like what my mom would call a long cool drink of water. She looked stunning and she knew it. Kim stood on her left and a man I assumed was her father stood on her right.
The six of them walked slowly up the aisle, Chuck and Terry fighting not to glance at each other. I saw Terry stifle a giggle. They made it up to the rest of the wedding party, parents kissing daughters and taking their seats in the front row, leaving Chuck and Terry with no one and nothing between them. Their hands found each other and they moved closer together.
Reverend Dorcet smiled at them and at us and began.
“Family and friends of Chuck and Terry, let me welcome you to this celebration of their love and commitment to one another.
“Family is a word that gets a lot of press these days. Politically, family values are often code for suppressing the rights of people who chose to live and love in ways that are different from the people hoisting that phrase into the air. But the real values that make up a family — caring for one another, lifting each other up to find our full potential, sharing our material and emotional wealth — these values are central to human existence and they know no political boundary. Whenever we find people with whom we can share these values, it is cause for celebration, and we should always be supportive when our loved ones expand their own circle of family.”
I saw Kim choke back a sob, and Chuck looked steadfastly at the reverend, so much so that I thought she might be trying to burn a hole in his natty suit. Terry squeezed her hand and smiled at her.
“Family is more than mere genetic relationship,” the reverend went on. “Many of us find more kinship with the people we chose to include in our lives than with those to whom we are connected by blood. I am reminded that the word love is a verb, not simply something we acquire the same way we do our height or eye colour.
“And so, here today, we celebrate the creation of one new family and the extension and joining of two existing families. Through the commitment of these two women, Teresa and Charlotte, to a marriage that includes not only them, but by extension their other loved ones, we reaffirm the most important of all human achievements, the capacity for love.”
The reverend spoke to the wedding party quietly, and I saw Rob and Terry’s friend El
ena reach into their pockets. Rob handed Chuck a small box. She turned toward Terry and in a soft voice began to speak.
“Terry, I promise to love and support you, in everything you choose to do. I want to carry you over the difficulties and stand beside you in your triumphs. I will be your friend, your lover, your partner in all things, for as long as love lasts.” She fumbled with the box in her hand, nearly dropping it, sending Terry into a small fit of giggles. She recovered the box, opened it and took out a ring, which she slipped onto Terry’s finger.
Terry took her own box from Elena and turned back to Chuck. “My darling, beautiful Charlotte,” she started, and Chuck immediately began to cry. “I have loved you my whole life; my only regret is that it took me so long to find you. I will love you as long as the stars burn in the sky, as long as the trees stand in the forest. You are my heartstone, you ground me to the Earth, you let me fly. With you by my side we will live as one heart, one life together. I promise my heart to you, for always and forever.” She put the ring on Chuck’s finger. I heard a small sound from the front row and saw that Kim had entirely dissolved into tears.
I glanced over at Seedy, who had a smile on her face and the glint of a few tears in her own eyes. The minister then took a gnarled old broom from behind the dais, and swept a circle around Chuck and Terry. He came back to a spot between them and the guests and crouched down, holding the broom out horizontally over the ground. Holding hands, Chuck and Terry hitched up their dresses and stepped over the broom together, then turned to each other. The minister stood and said, “By the authority of the Unitarian Church of Victoria and the province of British Columbia, I introduce to you for the first time as a married couple, Charlotte and Teresa Prokopnik-Frost.”
On that cue, Chuck pulled Terry close to her and they kissed for a long time while the guests whooped and clapped. When they finally pulled apart and walked down the aisle holding hands, we threw confetti and rice. I turned to Seedy. “Doesn’t she look fantastic?” I asked.
The Home for Wayward Parrots Page 13
