Fic: QAF "Back to the Beginning" (6/9)
Title: Back to the Beginning (6/9)
Rating: PG
Summary: Joan resorts to bribery, and Brian shows Justin the house where he grew up.
Disclaimer: The characters of QAF belong to CowLip and Showtime, but a girl can always dream.
Earlier installments: One, Two, Three, Four, Five
I knew somebody would come. I figured it would be Michael. Maybe with his mother or Theodore in tow.
I didn’t expect him to bring Justin. Looking for all the world like he just got out of bed, a knapsack over his shoulder and some fear in his eyes. Afraid. One guess who he was afraid of.
Me.
That I’d ream him a new one for showing up here at a time like this.
Instead, I fixed Michael with the ‘you’ve gone too far’ stare, but before I got the words out, he was shuffling closer, that stupid Styrofoam container in his hand full of whatever the diner was serving today. “If you want to say it’s my fault, go ahead. But he deserved to know.” Then he put the food on the table next to the papers, put his hand on my shoulder, before he let it slide up into my hair, rubbing the back of my neck. He stood really close behind me, letting some of his body warmth seep into me, while he went on stroking the back of my head. He does these things that make it impossible for me to stay mad at him, so I swallowed the words I was planning to hurl at him and looked over at Justin instead.
Beautiful. God, so fuckin’ beautiful. He could tell I wasn’t angry anymore, and I got a glimpse of that smile that makes him dangerous to every other queer on the planet.
Before I got to ask him anything, though, there was a knock at the door, and an older man stuck his head in the door. “Uhm, hello, is this the Kinney residence?”
“Doc Rittenhouse? You’re in the right place. Go on up.” I nodded with my head towards the stairs and let him go up alone. A few moments later, we could hear fresh sounds of weeping. Claire again. Ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Justin and Michael moved so they could sit down with me, watch me. Fuck, it was like two vultures, circling, waiting for me to show the least sign of weakness. Not a chance. “I’m all right. She’s dead, it’s over, can we please move on already?”
Justin still hadn’t said anything. Michael went for the obvious, asking, “What did she say?” He could see the empty envelopes, and it didn’t take a professor from Carnegie Mellon to figure out what was wadded up in my hand.
The words came spitting out of me like venom then. “She wants me to take care of Claire and her boys. She said she loves me. What a fucking lie that is, like she ever loved me.” Somehow, Justin’s hand was on my arm by then, just resting there.
Michael knew better than to walk into that minefield, and for some reason, Sunshine didn’t turn on his Pollyanna routine, either. I half-expected him to say, “She must have loved you. She raised you” or some shit like that, but he didn’t.
He let the hand stroke my arm for a bit, then he asked, “What can we do, that would help?”
Christ. Get me the fuck out of here and tell me I never have to come back. But it came out as “Give me another drink and maybe I’ll be able to forget this shithole even exists.”
Michael glanced over to the sideboard, gave Justin a nod, and let the blond pour me another drink. He poured three, one for each of us. Michael sat there for a minute, looking at the drink, then he raised it slowly in my direction. “You survived. You didn’t let them go on hurting you. And she can’t hurt you anymore.” Then he drained off the whiskey and put his glass back down on the table, as if that was the end of it, subject closed. Maybe he thought I’d agree. Hell, nothing would’ve pleased me more.
“Yeah? Well, she’s got a few last zingers in store, boys and girls. Joanie wants-what the hell does Joanie want…” and I flipped through the pages of her will to read the relevant parts. The words came out high-pitched, mocking. “’I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that my funeral service is to be conducted by Reverend Tom Butterfield’ and ‘I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that my son Brian is to say a eulogy at the burial site’ and ‘I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that all proceeds from my estate shall descend to my son Brian’ so that he can go on performing good deeds in the name of Saint Joan. Amen!” I picked up the tumbler and slammed back the whiskey, but I barely felt the burn down my throat.
Justin was prising my fingers away from the paper, asking softly, “Can I read it?” and I let go the edge as he took it into his own hands. He sat silently flipping through the pages, his eyes getting bigger all the time. Then he turned to me, saying, “Jesus, Brian. Did she really expect you to do all this shit?” And he sort of snickered a bit as he said, “She never figured out Reverend Tom was gay, huh?” That brought a smile to all of our faces.
“Nope. She kept on saying how he was ‘like a son to her’-she never did figure out how much he was like the one she already had. Score one for closet queens everywhere.”
Michael reached over to take the papers from Justin, scanned the document, then he tossed it back on the table, looking at me. “I take it that you are not, quote, ‘willing to renounce your sinful homosexual lifestyle before Reverend Tom Butterfield,’ unquote, in order to collect the inheritance. Christ, she thought she could just bribe you with money and you would stop being gay?!?” For a moment, Michael bristled with anger, then he remembered that Joan was dead, and he rapidly cooled down, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Why not? It’s what Claire thinks. That’s why she told me she didn’t inherit anything. They both figure I’m such a lying bastard that I would say I wasn’t gay, take the money, and cut her off without a cent. It’s why Joan told me to take care of Claire-she assumed I’d take the money.” You never really knew me, Mom.
Justin chimed in, “But you won’t. So instead, you get nothing, and you’re left administering a trust that gives half of everything to Claire and the other half to a charity selected by Reverend Tom.”
“I don’t need the money. Fuck, if she’d told me this was her plan, I’d have laughed in her face.” And I meant it. Kinnetik’s bottom line is four times what it was last year, and I’m the sole partner. Joan’s offer from the grave was barely a year’s salary to me. Even so-it was the last kick in the teeth. Thanks, Mom. One more thing to remember you by.
Another knock on the door, this time the guys from the funeral home. “She’s upstairs. The doc is writing a death certificate.” As they moved through with their equipment, we all avoided looking in their direction. Meanwhile, I could see Justin looking at Michael, uncertain what they should do next.
No use delaying. I took a long breath, held it, then let it go.
“Justin, call your mother. We’ll put the house on the market tomorrow. At least Jennifer can make a commission out of this dump. Michael, see if you can get Claire to eat this”-I patted the Styrofoam carton-“if I tried, she’d probably think I put rat poison in it.” Michael picked it up and headed for the stairs, while Justin dialed his mother. I flipped open my cellphone and called my cleaning lady. The house would need a thorough going over before it could be shown to prospective buyers.
As I waited for her to answer, I crossed into the kitchen and pulled out the list of ‘Important Numbers’ from beside the phone, jotting down the one for ‘Reverend Tom’ as I gave Julia directions to the house and promised an extra $100 if she would strip Joan’s bed and scour the kitchen tomorrow. That would leave the place clean enough for Jennifer to show it to outsiders.
The sooner the better.
++++++++++
It must have been close to 10 or 11 by the time they’d taken the body away, and Michael got Claire to eat, pick up her shit, and leave. He could tell I didn’t want to talk with her anymore, really didn’t want to talk to anybody. I gave him a look that said ‘You’ve done enough, go home now’ but he knew I really meant ‘I want to be alone with Justin.’ Michael took the hint, gave me a hug, a “Call me tomorrow, okay?” and he left.
Alone at last. Though I have to admit that this was the last place I’d expected to see him again. In New York, or on Liberty Avenue. At my loft. Anywhere but here. Four months since the last time we fucked, and he turned up here.
He came over to sit down with me, leaning into me. As his head fell over onto my shoulder, I could hear him say, “You never brought me here.”
“It’s not the Disneyland of Greater Pittsburgh, Sunshine. Anything but.”
“You came to my home. You’ve seen every place I’ve ever lived.”
I shrugged. “True. So what?”
“So, you lived here. I want to see it. I want to see it before you have Mom sell it and it’s gone.” He lifted his head off my shoulder and turned to look at me. Weird, but I could tell he meant it.
“Why?”
“Because. It’s part of you. Your memories, the good and the bad.” I knew right then that Michael had said something to him, but he was still talking so I had to listen. “I’ve seen Michael’s room, now I want to see yours.”
“No.”
“Bri-annnn. Please?”
God, I loved it when he whined like that. I’m pathetic, yeah, but I do. But I wasn’t giving in that easily. I shook my head, looked at him like he was crazy even if he was dead serious. “Just-innnn, no.” Two could play that game.
He wasn’t having any of it. He stood up, tugging at my hand. “C’mon. Show me, Brian. We’ll never come back here, ever again. Just this once.”
He was right, and I knew it. Last night under this roof. Hallelujah! I stood up and gave him my best ‘bored tour guide’ voice. “On your left, the dining room, scene of more cold dinners than I can count. On your right, the living room with its key feature, the never-empty liquor cabinet.” I shoved him towards the stairs, so he could see the rest.
The sarcasm was in full force by the time we reached the top of the stairs. “Three bedrooms up here, Mr. Taylor. Straight ahead, the parentals’, where sex reportedly took place twice, resulting in a girl and a boy. Otherwise, Siberia was probably warmer.” With my hand on his neck, I steered him to the next room on the landing. “Claire’s bedroom. Where she slept with her high school boyfriend at least once that I know of.” Justin’s questioning gaze earned him a “that’s why he married her. She got pregnant. At least he had the good sense to divorce her when he realized what a bitch she is.”
As his eyebrows shot up in surprise, I pushed him towards the last door on the hallway, and jerked it open so he could see inside. The plaid bedspread still hadn’t changed, and why would I think it would have? “And this is little Brian’s room.” I let go of him and stood in the doorway, while he turned on a light, started walking around.
Mom had left the room as it was the day I moved out for college, a kind of shrine. I’d taken anything that had meaning out of it long ago, so what was left were the long-forgotten things that used to hold memories. Photographs. Junior high soccer trophies. An abandoned hairbrush and a few books. Justin’s fingers touched a long-ago photo of my younger self, smiling at what passed for a cool haircut circa 1985. “You really were a geek.”
“Was not.”
“Chemistry club? Were too.”
I couldn’t just stand there and have him stare at a photograph when the real thing was right next to him. An arm stretched out, around his shoulders, drawing him into my side, letting my nose take in the scent of his shampoo. Still that strawberry shit. Justin, when are you ever gonna….
“So, this was your room.” Justin’s eyes were roaming again, and he pulled away, walked over to the bed, sat down on the edge. Stretched out on it. Looked up at me. Waiting for me to join him.
I did the one thing that made sense. I crawled in too, draped myself half over him, two men’s bodies wrapped around each other in a too-narrow bed. But it was what he wanted, and what I wanted too, so what the hell? I couldn’t help myself, his skin smelled like that Justin-smell that gets me every time: I nuzzled the side of his neck with my nose, tried to burrow in deeper. Justin’s arms went around me, and even if I wasn’t looking, I could tell he was taking it all in, looking at everything on the walls, on the chest, every marker to pick up clues to my younger self.
“I haven’t been in this room for more than a dozen years, Justin. It’s not me.”
“I know that. But you were here every night for a very long time. So it’s a part of you. A part you never let anybody know about.” And his arms hugged me a little closer, if that was possible. He kissed my cheek and whispered, “Did you ever get laid here?”
I smiled into his shoulder and didn’t say anything.
I kept thinking about all the reasons why I never brought a trick into this house, even when I was sixteen and horny as hell. Too many people, too easily discovered. The single staircase, no other exit route.
Fear. Fear that Jack would beat the shit out of me and this time he wouldn’t stop at a black eye or a bloody nose.
When he’d figured out the answer I didn’t give him, Justin turned me gently in his arms, until we were nose to nose, forehead to forehead. His lips reached for mine, a soft kiss of reassurance. A reminder of all that I miss every day while he’s in New York, a world away from where I wish he was-with me.
Seven
Author’s note on religion: CowLip never did figure out whether Brian’s family was Catholic or Protestant. Jack once told Brian not to let his mother know he was gay because “she’d be at Mass three times a day.” At the wake following Jack’s funeral, the minister is called “Father” by at least two people. When Joan met Debbie in church (during the episode when Joan discovers Brian has cancer), she had just come from standing in front of a rank of votive candles. One more piece of suggestive evidence for his Catholicism comes from the fact that Michael calls himself Italian and Brian calls himself Irish in the episode when Brian is suspended from work for alleged sexual harassment.
However, Tom Butterfield is repeatedly addressed as “Reverend,” not “Father,” by Joan, and she even introduces Brian to him on the steps of the church that way. In the preceding scene inside the church, Joan did not kneel or cross herself before taking her pew, nor is she on her knees while praying in a later sequence, when Brian comes to confront her and tell her Butterfield is gay. So once again, CowLip’s mad continuity skillz take the cake. I’ve stuck with calling him Reverend Tom since that’s what Joan called him.
Rating: PG
Summary: Joan resorts to bribery, and Brian shows Justin the house where he grew up.
Disclaimer: The characters of QAF belong to CowLip and Showtime, but a girl can always dream.
Earlier installments: One, Two, Three, Four, Five
I knew somebody would come. I figured it would be Michael. Maybe with his mother or Theodore in tow.
I didn’t expect him to bring Justin. Looking for all the world like he just got out of bed, a knapsack over his shoulder and some fear in his eyes. Afraid. One guess who he was afraid of.
Me.
That I’d ream him a new one for showing up here at a time like this.
Instead, I fixed Michael with the ‘you’ve gone too far’ stare, but before I got the words out, he was shuffling closer, that stupid Styrofoam container in his hand full of whatever the diner was serving today. “If you want to say it’s my fault, go ahead. But he deserved to know.” Then he put the food on the table next to the papers, put his hand on my shoulder, before he let it slide up into my hair, rubbing the back of my neck. He stood really close behind me, letting some of his body warmth seep into me, while he went on stroking the back of my head. He does these things that make it impossible for me to stay mad at him, so I swallowed the words I was planning to hurl at him and looked over at Justin instead.
Beautiful. God, so fuckin’ beautiful. He could tell I wasn’t angry anymore, and I got a glimpse of that smile that makes him dangerous to every other queer on the planet.
Before I got to ask him anything, though, there was a knock at the door, and an older man stuck his head in the door. “Uhm, hello, is this the Kinney residence?”
“Doc Rittenhouse? You’re in the right place. Go on up.” I nodded with my head towards the stairs and let him go up alone. A few moments later, we could hear fresh sounds of weeping. Claire again. Ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Justin and Michael moved so they could sit down with me, watch me. Fuck, it was like two vultures, circling, waiting for me to show the least sign of weakness. Not a chance. “I’m all right. She’s dead, it’s over, can we please move on already?”
Justin still hadn’t said anything. Michael went for the obvious, asking, “What did she say?” He could see the empty envelopes, and it didn’t take a professor from Carnegie Mellon to figure out what was wadded up in my hand.
The words came spitting out of me like venom then. “She wants me to take care of Claire and her boys. She said she loves me. What a fucking lie that is, like she ever loved me.” Somehow, Justin’s hand was on my arm by then, just resting there.
Michael knew better than to walk into that minefield, and for some reason, Sunshine didn’t turn on his Pollyanna routine, either. I half-expected him to say, “She must have loved you. She raised you” or some shit like that, but he didn’t.
He let the hand stroke my arm for a bit, then he asked, “What can we do, that would help?”
Christ. Get me the fuck out of here and tell me I never have to come back. But it came out as “Give me another drink and maybe I’ll be able to forget this shithole even exists.”
Michael glanced over to the sideboard, gave Justin a nod, and let the blond pour me another drink. He poured three, one for each of us. Michael sat there for a minute, looking at the drink, then he raised it slowly in my direction. “You survived. You didn’t let them go on hurting you. And she can’t hurt you anymore.” Then he drained off the whiskey and put his glass back down on the table, as if that was the end of it, subject closed. Maybe he thought I’d agree. Hell, nothing would’ve pleased me more.
“Yeah? Well, she’s got a few last zingers in store, boys and girls. Joanie wants-what the hell does Joanie want…” and I flipped through the pages of her will to read the relevant parts. The words came out high-pitched, mocking. “’I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that my funeral service is to be conducted by Reverend Tom Butterfield’ and ‘I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that my son Brian is to say a eulogy at the burial site’ and ‘I, Joan Kinney, stipulate that all proceeds from my estate shall descend to my son Brian’ so that he can go on performing good deeds in the name of Saint Joan. Amen!” I picked up the tumbler and slammed back the whiskey, but I barely felt the burn down my throat.
Justin was prising my fingers away from the paper, asking softly, “Can I read it?” and I let go the edge as he took it into his own hands. He sat silently flipping through the pages, his eyes getting bigger all the time. Then he turned to me, saying, “Jesus, Brian. Did she really expect you to do all this shit?” And he sort of snickered a bit as he said, “She never figured out Reverend Tom was gay, huh?” That brought a smile to all of our faces.
“Nope. She kept on saying how he was ‘like a son to her’-she never did figure out how much he was like the one she already had. Score one for closet queens everywhere.”
Michael reached over to take the papers from Justin, scanned the document, then he tossed it back on the table, looking at me. “I take it that you are not, quote, ‘willing to renounce your sinful homosexual lifestyle before Reverend Tom Butterfield,’ unquote, in order to collect the inheritance. Christ, she thought she could just bribe you with money and you would stop being gay?!?” For a moment, Michael bristled with anger, then he remembered that Joan was dead, and he rapidly cooled down, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Why not? It’s what Claire thinks. That’s why she told me she didn’t inherit anything. They both figure I’m such a lying bastard that I would say I wasn’t gay, take the money, and cut her off without a cent. It’s why Joan told me to take care of Claire-she assumed I’d take the money.” You never really knew me, Mom.
Justin chimed in, “But you won’t. So instead, you get nothing, and you’re left administering a trust that gives half of everything to Claire and the other half to a charity selected by Reverend Tom.”
“I don’t need the money. Fuck, if she’d told me this was her plan, I’d have laughed in her face.” And I meant it. Kinnetik’s bottom line is four times what it was last year, and I’m the sole partner. Joan’s offer from the grave was barely a year’s salary to me. Even so-it was the last kick in the teeth. Thanks, Mom. One more thing to remember you by.
Another knock on the door, this time the guys from the funeral home. “She’s upstairs. The doc is writing a death certificate.” As they moved through with their equipment, we all avoided looking in their direction. Meanwhile, I could see Justin looking at Michael, uncertain what they should do next.
No use delaying. I took a long breath, held it, then let it go.
“Justin, call your mother. We’ll put the house on the market tomorrow. At least Jennifer can make a commission out of this dump. Michael, see if you can get Claire to eat this”-I patted the Styrofoam carton-“if I tried, she’d probably think I put rat poison in it.” Michael picked it up and headed for the stairs, while Justin dialed his mother. I flipped open my cellphone and called my cleaning lady. The house would need a thorough going over before it could be shown to prospective buyers.
As I waited for her to answer, I crossed into the kitchen and pulled out the list of ‘Important Numbers’ from beside the phone, jotting down the one for ‘Reverend Tom’ as I gave Julia directions to the house and promised an extra $100 if she would strip Joan’s bed and scour the kitchen tomorrow. That would leave the place clean enough for Jennifer to show it to outsiders.
The sooner the better.
++++++++++
It must have been close to 10 or 11 by the time they’d taken the body away, and Michael got Claire to eat, pick up her shit, and leave. He could tell I didn’t want to talk with her anymore, really didn’t want to talk to anybody. I gave him a look that said ‘You’ve done enough, go home now’ but he knew I really meant ‘I want to be alone with Justin.’ Michael took the hint, gave me a hug, a “Call me tomorrow, okay?” and he left.
Alone at last. Though I have to admit that this was the last place I’d expected to see him again. In New York, or on Liberty Avenue. At my loft. Anywhere but here. Four months since the last time we fucked, and he turned up here.
He came over to sit down with me, leaning into me. As his head fell over onto my shoulder, I could hear him say, “You never brought me here.”
“It’s not the Disneyland of Greater Pittsburgh, Sunshine. Anything but.”
“You came to my home. You’ve seen every place I’ve ever lived.”
I shrugged. “True. So what?”
“So, you lived here. I want to see it. I want to see it before you have Mom sell it and it’s gone.” He lifted his head off my shoulder and turned to look at me. Weird, but I could tell he meant it.
“Why?”
“Because. It’s part of you. Your memories, the good and the bad.” I knew right then that Michael had said something to him, but he was still talking so I had to listen. “I’ve seen Michael’s room, now I want to see yours.”
“No.”
“Bri-annnn. Please?”
God, I loved it when he whined like that. I’m pathetic, yeah, but I do. But I wasn’t giving in that easily. I shook my head, looked at him like he was crazy even if he was dead serious. “Just-innnn, no.” Two could play that game.
He wasn’t having any of it. He stood up, tugging at my hand. “C’mon. Show me, Brian. We’ll never come back here, ever again. Just this once.”
He was right, and I knew it. Last night under this roof. Hallelujah! I stood up and gave him my best ‘bored tour guide’ voice. “On your left, the dining room, scene of more cold dinners than I can count. On your right, the living room with its key feature, the never-empty liquor cabinet.” I shoved him towards the stairs, so he could see the rest.
The sarcasm was in full force by the time we reached the top of the stairs. “Three bedrooms up here, Mr. Taylor. Straight ahead, the parentals’, where sex reportedly took place twice, resulting in a girl and a boy. Otherwise, Siberia was probably warmer.” With my hand on his neck, I steered him to the next room on the landing. “Claire’s bedroom. Where she slept with her high school boyfriend at least once that I know of.” Justin’s questioning gaze earned him a “that’s why he married her. She got pregnant. At least he had the good sense to divorce her when he realized what a bitch she is.”
As his eyebrows shot up in surprise, I pushed him towards the last door on the hallway, and jerked it open so he could see inside. The plaid bedspread still hadn’t changed, and why would I think it would have? “And this is little Brian’s room.” I let go of him and stood in the doorway, while he turned on a light, started walking around.
Mom had left the room as it was the day I moved out for college, a kind of shrine. I’d taken anything that had meaning out of it long ago, so what was left were the long-forgotten things that used to hold memories. Photographs. Junior high soccer trophies. An abandoned hairbrush and a few books. Justin’s fingers touched a long-ago photo of my younger self, smiling at what passed for a cool haircut circa 1985. “You really were a geek.”
“Was not.”
“Chemistry club? Were too.”
I couldn’t just stand there and have him stare at a photograph when the real thing was right next to him. An arm stretched out, around his shoulders, drawing him into my side, letting my nose take in the scent of his shampoo. Still that strawberry shit. Justin, when are you ever gonna….
“So, this was your room.” Justin’s eyes were roaming again, and he pulled away, walked over to the bed, sat down on the edge. Stretched out on it. Looked up at me. Waiting for me to join him.
I did the one thing that made sense. I crawled in too, draped myself half over him, two men’s bodies wrapped around each other in a too-narrow bed. But it was what he wanted, and what I wanted too, so what the hell? I couldn’t help myself, his skin smelled like that Justin-smell that gets me every time: I nuzzled the side of his neck with my nose, tried to burrow in deeper. Justin’s arms went around me, and even if I wasn’t looking, I could tell he was taking it all in, looking at everything on the walls, on the chest, every marker to pick up clues to my younger self.
“I haven’t been in this room for more than a dozen years, Justin. It’s not me.”
“I know that. But you were here every night for a very long time. So it’s a part of you. A part you never let anybody know about.” And his arms hugged me a little closer, if that was possible. He kissed my cheek and whispered, “Did you ever get laid here?”
I smiled into his shoulder and didn’t say anything.
I kept thinking about all the reasons why I never brought a trick into this house, even when I was sixteen and horny as hell. Too many people, too easily discovered. The single staircase, no other exit route.
Fear. Fear that Jack would beat the shit out of me and this time he wouldn’t stop at a black eye or a bloody nose.
When he’d figured out the answer I didn’t give him, Justin turned me gently in his arms, until we were nose to nose, forehead to forehead. His lips reached for mine, a soft kiss of reassurance. A reminder of all that I miss every day while he’s in New York, a world away from where I wish he was-with me.
Seven
Author’s note on religion: CowLip never did figure out whether Brian’s family was Catholic or Protestant. Jack once told Brian not to let his mother know he was gay because “she’d be at Mass three times a day.” At the wake following Jack’s funeral, the minister is called “Father” by at least two people. When Joan met Debbie in church (during the episode when Joan discovers Brian has cancer), she had just come from standing in front of a rank of votive candles. One more piece of suggestive evidence for his Catholicism comes from the fact that Michael calls himself Italian and Brian calls himself Irish in the episode when Brian is suspended from work for alleged sexual harassment.
However, Tom Butterfield is repeatedly addressed as “Reverend,” not “Father,” by Joan, and she even introduces Brian to him on the steps of the church that way. In the preceding scene inside the church, Joan did not kneel or cross herself before taking her pew, nor is she on her knees while praying in a later sequence, when Brian comes to confront her and tell her Butterfield is gay. So once again, CowLip’s mad continuity skillz take the cake. I’ve stuck with calling him Reverend Tom since that’s what Joan called him.