Family Ties
by
Hans M Hirschi
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Beaten Track Publishing
www.beatentrackpublishing.com
This novel is a work of fiction and the characters and events in it exist only in its pages and in the author’s imagination.
* * * * *
To Alex,
For starting a family of our own
with me.
* * * * *
Table of Contents
Family Ties
About the Author
By the Author
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Excerpt from Jonathan’s Hope
Beaten Track Publishing
* * * * *
The Hole in the Ground
It was about three feet deep and not more than one foot in diameter. To one side, there was a pile of earth that once had filled it.
The hole.
In a few hours, Sascha would lay his mother to rest in it, in a small nondescript urn that he and his brother Mike had agreed upon. While their mom was Catholic, Sascha had long ago lost all faith, if he ever had any.
Not that he wasn’t a spiritual person, but organized religion had never done him any good, quite the contrary. The service for their mom would be a religious one. He had lost that battle and didn’t really care. The minister they chose was not Catholic. The priest had refused to bury a woman who had chosen to marry a Protestant. She had in effect been a whore in the eyes of the church, having given birth to two bastards, i.e. children who had never been baptized. When she died without remorse, without receiving her last sacrament, the priest closed that final door to Catholic redemption.
Sascha knew it wouldn’t matter. He had no illusions of any afterlife where she would be beautiful again, not ravaged by the sickness that had erased life and all her memories from her, reunited with her husband, who had passed away a few years earlier.
Looking into the hole again, he couldn’t help it any longer. Tears welled up inside him, and he shivered all over. He fell to his knees and nearly tripped into the hole.
Sascha would have preferred to take the urn back to Singapore, where he lived, and spread the ashes at sea, but again, he caved in to the pressures and expectations of society, of his family. After all, his mother deserved to be laid to rest next to her husband, his aunt had said. So it was decided.
His father had passed away unexpectedly just a few days after Sascha and Dan had visited them. Doctors said his heart attack was probably due to overexertion. He had been looking after their mother for a few years, making sure she could stay at home with him, despite the Alzheimer’s. Her constant paranoia, forgetting everything, from keys to jewelry, had taken a toll on Sascha’s father. When Sascha got the call from his mom, he had been shocked. That was nearly four years ago. He had been way past it, yet kneeling here, over the hole that was to be his mother’s grave, it all came back to him, as if it were yesterday. The grief took hold of him, shook him. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks.
***
Sascha was still on his knees, in his own world, when Dan approached him from behind. “You okay? We need to get going.”
Sascha turned around, momentarily pulled from his sorrow, to see his husband standing there, looking down at him. At thirty-six, Dan was still quite a sight, tall, towering over six-foot five, lean and muscular, with a full head of blond hair that almost reached his shoulders. Just then, though, his expression was worried.
“Hon, the kids are waiting at the house, everyone is getting ready for the service, and Mike is getting anxious about starting things. You know what your brother is like.”
Dan paused mid-sentence to let the point he was trying to make sink in. “Come on, I’m right here, and I won’t leave you alone in this.”
With his last words, he approached Sascha and helped him get up from the ground. Dan pulled him close to him, put an arm around his waist, and started to lead him to the exit of the cemetery. Sascha leaned against his husband, taking strength from him, knowing that he would get through this day, despite Mike, despite their waiting family. He had to be strong, and he couldn’t let his kids down. Not on a day like this.
* * * * *
Sascha
During the walk to the house where he had grown up as a boy, Sascha suddenly came to think of his birth. His mother had told him the story so many times that it felt as if the memories really were his. As a trained psychologist, Sascha knew it was impossible, but it certainly felt real enough. False memories could be tricky, he knew.
His mom had lost two kids before Sascha had been born, one as late as in her fifth month, a boy. She had been devastated, and so her happiness was all the greater when she finally felt her labor kick in. Her husband had still been at work, so she called him to pick her up. A bag with a few necessities had been standing in the hallway for three weeks. Sascha took his time and was already two weeks overdue.
But as she would learn over the years raising Sascha, her boy was not about to make things easy for her, oh no! Not only did he take his time through forty hours of labor, but he weighed well over nine pounds. In the end, the doctor had to use forceps. Sascha had moved too far down, a C-section was no longer an option. Besides, he might have died from oxygen deprivation, and there had even been a brief discussion between the doctor and Sascha’s dad about having to choose between Sascha and his mom. Luckily, Sascha’s dad didn’t make that choice, and apparently, he had made it pretty clear that the only life in jeopardy was the surgeon’s.
When it was finally over, his mom had been completely exhausted, and according to those near the family, she would never fully recover from it. When she gave birth to Mike, two years later, things went more smoothly, but the doctors still made it very clear to her that this would be her last child. Sascha’s dad had gone ahead and gotten a vasectomy after that, out of worry for his wife’s well-being, but it was too late. Her body was weakened, her immune system damaged.
Sascha had often contemplated this as he grew up, and the thought hit him yet again as they approached the house, tall and well built, right there in the middle of the village where he had grown up, clearly the home of people of some influence. Sascha’s dad had owned a construction firm, the biggest one in the region, and people were generally afraid of him, some even referring to him as the “duke,” which really bothered the mayors elected by the people to govern the village. Sascha’s dad wielded such a huge influence that it was impossible to get anything done without his approval, no matter what the town council, the mayor or any of the staff wanted to do. In the end, Sascha’s dad would always, clandestinely and behind closed doors, make sure that things went his way. Sascha had even participated at one particular meeting in town hall, where a new road was discussed and where one word from his dad had swayed the opinion of the townspeople attending, getting the road approved, despite opposition from the papers and the environmentalists. For once, Sascha’s dad had sided with the town council. Needless to say, he got the contract to build the road.
Sascha had to chuckle as that particular memory resurfaced, and Dan gave him a puzzled look. “What’s so funny? A minute ago you’re sobbing and now you’re laughing? I’m not sure I follow you.”
Dan and Sascha were two completely different people. Sure, they were generally considered a match made in heaven by their friends, but in terms of personality, they were like fire and water. Sascha was an extremely emotional person, suffering from mild bipolarity, as had his mom and several of her relatives, including Sascha’s granddad. Laughter and tears were always close to the surface, making Sascha a highly empathetic person, some said the perfect counselor. He wasn’t so sure, not at night, when the demons kept him awake.
Dan, on the other hand, was the perfect human being. Where Sascha had begun to put on a couple of extra pounds, Dan was in perfect shape. His job as a physical education teacher at a high school for expats in Singapore kept him in excellent condition, or was it volunteering as coach for a local little league team in their Holland Village neighborhood? Or his rowing? Sascha didn’t really know, but he loved his husband’s ripped chest and stomach, and he adored his biceps and the muscular legs, adorned by the most exquisite golden hairs.
Sascha looked up at his husband, suddenly not thinking of the pending funeral any more, but horny. He couldn’t help it and laughed out loud, soliciting yet another puzzled and somewhat worried look from his husband. Dan sometimes couldn’t quite make out what was going on in Sascha’s head, and Sascha was fine with that. They understood each other well enough that both knew that questions would be asked if anything needed clarifying.
Today was no different.
“You okay?” Dan looked down at him with a worried expression.
“Yeah, my mind’s just wandering. I love you! Thanks for being here.” Two small red blushes appeared on either side of Dan’s face, still not quite in the clear what his husband was referring to. “Okay…”
“I was just thinking about last night, licking your nipples during foreplay, your chest. I’m so lucky.”
“You’re thinking about sex? An hour before we bury your mom? You know, Hon, sometimes…” his voice trailed, but he couldn’t help but smile, letting his own mind wander as well, feeling his crotch jump to action. “Shit, see what you’re doing to me?” Dan was embarrassed yet smiling coyly.
They reached the house where Mike, Sascha’s younger brother, angrily waited for them. He watched as they walked closer.
“You’re late. We need to get ready! Aunt Clara has called me twice already. She wants us to be there early to greet the guests.”
* * * * *
Mike
Mike was the opposite of Sascha in every conceivable way. Almost as tall as Dan, several inches taller than his brother, he was the spitting image of their father, which meant to say that he had an appetite for life, for power, for money.
He was a successful business man, living with his wife in Germany, of all places, yet still managing to take care of their father’s construction business as a hobby, having a good foreman in place to run the daily operations. It was Mike who pulled the strings. He was an asshole, Sascha thought. He didn’t like his brother very much, which was highly mutual. Mike never much cared for his older brother, always afraid that Sascha might do things he wanted to do, thus denying him opportunities.
When Sascha had come out to his parents by accident, Mike had been furious, not so much about Sascha being gay per se. He was too young to fully grasp the idea, and his buddies at school were of little help with their comments. “What? Your bro is a chocolate pusher?” Mike was upset because it hurt their mother. It had almost killed her when Sascha came out. He never forgave Sascha for it, and their sibling rivalry descended into some sort of hatred from then on.
Sascha didn’t care. He withdrew. His brother was clearly living a different life than his, their circles never meeting, so he let it be. He was a wuss, he knew that, at least with regards to his family, but he didn’t care. Dan and their twins were all that mattered.
“I just took a quick stroll to the cemetery to make sure that everything is ready,” he tried to assuage his brother but guessed it wouldn’t help. Mike knew better. He saw the dried-up tears on Sascha’s face, the red eyes. He was no idiot.
“Whatever. Just get ready, will ya? I can’t stand that woman’s whining on the phone. So let’s get this over with.” Mike turned his bulky frame around and headed back into the house, Dan and Sascha following suit.
* * * * *
The Funeral
Aunt Clara had worried for nothing. Nobody had come. Only a handful of people sat in church today.
Sascha flinched. It hurt. He had loved his mother so much, and yet no one cared to honor her life by attending her funeral. No one but Aunt Clara, her sister-in-law, Mike, Dan, Sascha and the twins. Mike didn’t even take his family along, claiming that his wife never really cared much for her mother-in-law. Go figure!
Three curious visitors showed up in church. You know the type, the old hags who show up at every funeral, just to make sure it isn’t one of them up there in the casket, that it isn’t their turn, not quite yet anyway.
Isn’t there an expression in German for that? Sascha thought about it for a while, but as always, he couldn’t remember. He hated that particular aspect of his brain, his inability to remember stuff when he needed it. Then again, he didn’t really need to remember this, not now.
They greeted the three visitors and sat down in the front row, clearly marked as reserved for the family. Dan walked on, gently shoving the twins ahead of him, a strong hand around each boy’s shoulder. He was such an amazing parent! Sascha was in awe, watching as his husband sat down, hushing the twins as they started talking about some feature they had discovered high above them. Sascha was close to tears again, watching his beautiful man sitting there flanked by their sons, holding his huge arms around them, holding them tightly, safe from harm.
Mike sat down to their right, leaving Sascha no choice but to sit to the left. He tried not to let this breach of protocol get to him. As the oldest, he was supposed to sit to the right, but oh well… If it’s that important to Mike, let him.
He sat down next to Pascal, the younger of the boys. Technically paternal twins, they had been conceived at the same time through an in vitro treatment, and Pascal had been born fourteen minutes after his older brother. Sascha looked down at his boy and gently stroked his hair. Pascal looked up at his father with his big brown eyes and fidgeted on the bench. This could get tricky, Sascha thought, two five-year-olds sitting still in a church for an hour.
He was abruptly interrupted from his daydream when the minister approached their bench and greeted him with a handshake. Mike first, then Shane, Dan, Pascal, Sascha and finally Aunt Clara. He was disgusted by the sloppy handshake offered by the minister and his fake smile, but it would only be for one hour, and although it wasn’t much comfort, he would never have to see the man again.
I just have to get through the coming hour, that’s all, he thought, watching the minister approach the urn. It stood in a sea of flowers in front of the altar.
Four pounds of ash. That was all that was left of his mother. The thought terrified Sascha, and his grief welled up again.
Not in front of the boys. I have to be strong. He willed himself not to cry.
* * * * *
Empathy
Sascha had always been a strange kid. Even when he was young, his emotions and feelings would get in his way. Displaying his own emotions so openly had made him the victim of bullies at a very early age. Even as young as six years, Sascha was finely attuned to sensing other people’s well-being. Not everybody appreciated it, not his playgroup pals, not most adults.
As he would learn much later, during his training to become a psychologist, most people are not in tune with their own emotions. We don’t always acknowledge having them, don’t deal with them, don’t talk about them. Thus, the mere presence of an empath, a person who reads other people’s emotions (although far from the science fiction of one notable Deanna Troi), having someone near you who understands how you feel, sometimes better than you do, and is open about it and talks about it, is very threatening to peo
ple. When he was very young, Sascha would act rather than talk, hug people, or maybe stroke their cheeks in an effort to console.
As it was an act of instinct rather than premeditated or conscious, Sascha was often surprised at the violent reactions this would cause. People hit him. They kicked him, bullied him, hated him. Ultimately, they distanced themselves.
For many years, Sascha was lonely, distanced from the emotions that attracted him so strongly, just as light attracts insects. To this day, he was challenged to resist the urge to act instinctively to feelings or emotional outbursts.
At times, Sascha had wanted to will away his empathy. He dreamed of achieving a state of complete emotionlessness, when nothing would bother him, no sadness, no grief, no trouble, nothing. Those were fleeting moments that also meant missing the joy, the laughter, and the love, that strongest of all feelings, that sensation that floods the belly, making one’s stomach flutter. He remembered it well, the flush of the cheeks, the burning in the gut. Sascha was a love addict, an oxytocin junkie. It was the one thing that gave his life purpose, gave him the will to keep going, to live on.
With Dan, he had found a decent-sized outlet for his love, and when the boys came along, he was finally able to channel most of his love onto his family. Mustn’t smother the boys, though, he kept thinking. Must give them a normal life, not too sheltered.
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