HERITAGE OF THE PAST - Chapter 2: Part 1
Title: HERITAGE OF THE PAST
Chapter 2 - Part 1
Disclaimer: The characters of Brokeback are not mine and belong to Annie Proulx (God bless her!).
Summary: Life hasn't been easy for Alma Jr. since she divorced in November '86 and only her baby son, Ennis Jr., gives her hope for a brighter future...
By 7.30 am Ennis Jr. made it back, swet darkening his t-shirt’s collar and armpits. As he usually did, he followed the squared path edged by South Wolcott, East 2nd, South Beverly and East 15th St.. Sometimes, when he had no time for the full run, he cut down South Conwell, passing by the Cemetery. Maybe he wasn’t the fastest runner in the world but he definitely featured endurance.
He took off his shoes and left them outside, went in and put the mp3 player and the keyring on the small bowl purposely staying on a shell next to the main door. As everybody was used to simply throw keys in there, his poor iPod was hopelessly scratched, looking much older than its four months of age.
His mother was already up and getting breakfast ready - thanks God, he thought - so he quickly greeted her and went for a hot shower. Well, more than hot. Actually almost boiling if it wasn’t for the security valve. Ennis liked standing under the water jet, slightly shifting position as the temperature made his skin painful. Much to his mother complaint, of course. He got use to know it was time to get out when Alma Jr. started to scream. This time, however, he heard none shouting from the kitchen so he enjoyed the shower longer than the usual ten minutes. To him, it was some kind of ritual of “sterilization”: he could feel the stress, the fatigue and all of those bad thoughts sliding down with the water into the drain.
Ennis closed the tap and got out of the shower-box, the bathroom a dense cloud of steam. He dried himself with one of the big towels hanging on the wall and then grabbed his bathrobe. He went down to the kitchen, barefeet, while drying up his hair with a smaller towel.
“Will you EVER get used to slippers, at least when you get out of the bathroom, honey?”, said his mother, drawning his son’s eyes on the damp footprints he left on the floor.
“Mph!”, was all she got in reply before he sat at the table.
Definitely, his mother was in a good mood today: fried eggs with bacon, toasted bread, pancakes and strawberries where ready on the plates, together with the usual bottle of fresh milk, a whole pint of black coffee and a copy of the Casper Journal. When he tried to grab it Ennis’s hand got slammed by a wooden ladle.
“Don’t you dare, honey!”, Alma Jr. said with a devilish look in her eyes.
Rubbing his painful hand top, Ennis slowly began to chew his breakfast, planning a retaliation. He turned on the TV to watch the news and in twenty minutes they both were done.
When his mother went to the sink with the dirty plates, Ennis spoke in a low, soft voice.
“Mom... I’ll take care of that later myself: I’m due to the evening shift, today. Please, sit down and tell me about my grandpa.”
He heard a sigh, her shoulders raised and lowered.
Alma Jr. went back to her chair and slowly massaged her temples, as if it helped making up the speech.
“Well, you know your grandpa died on 1989 - when he was fortyfive - and you were almost four so you can barely remember him, I guess.”
Ennis nodded. Trying hard, he could recall his grandfather’s tender embrace, his warmth, his eyes carefully looking after him when he played outside in the small garden directly leading to the street. But it was more a sensation than a real vision of him. A clash of sound and colours. Maybe a smell of worn leather.
“Apart from you, he was the person I loved more in my whole life. More than your father, more than my mother or my sister. We always shared a special link. When I was a child, I could stare at him in adoration for minutes, simply looking at him while he smoked or had a beer. When he realized, he’d raised me in his arms, grinning, and asked what I was doing. I was addicted to those precious, kind and rare smiles of him. Later on they became less frequent and eventually vanished after the divorce. He always did his best, as far as I can say, to stay close to my sister and me, even if we could met him once a month.”
Ennis Jr. already knew about the divorce as his grandfather lived with his daughter almost six years long while his ex-wife, grandma Alma Sr., still lived in Riverton with her new husband, Bill, and the children she got from him. “Children” who were over thirty by now, anyway.
His aunt Francine moved to Vermont many years ago and Ennis Jr. only saw her once in a while. Once every one or two years, actually.
“What you probably don’t know is the reason of MY divorce from your father.”
“Well”, he replied, “I hardly recall him as well, considering he never showed up in the past ten years. Not that I miss him, anyway. Someone here has been more than good on his own for both, you know.”
He catched a smirk on his mother’s lips for the appreciation.
“Fact is, apart from the usual issues a couple may face, Kurt and I really started to quarrel after your grandfather joined us and especially after he found out my father’s past affair with Jack Twist.”
That name, again. Ennis Jr. was agog, eagerly waiting for the full story.
“Only THEN I realized how few I knew of Kurt Long and how easily you may get involved with someone you really start discovering when you live together, day by day, and not before. Your father wasn’t really a bad person and I’m sure he loved me but he showed such a hatred towards my father I just couldn’t stand. Even now I can’t understand how the hell I didn’t catch up with him being that homophobic before I married him.”
She sighed again but it seemed more a sigh of relief to Ennis Jr.
“I guess, however, it’s because it wasn’t an issue before my father. Anyway, I was pregnant with you, I had no job and the house we were in was simply too expensive for us. Obviously, I was paid alimony by your father - as he was the one in desertion - but money was never enough, especially after your birth.
Till then, my father didn’t live: he survived. When he moved in after the ranched he worked for was sold, he just tried to be as discreet as possible. He was out working most of the day and went back home for dinner only, barely talking, and then out again for a beer in a pub and back home to sleep. It almost seemed he wasn’t living with us at all and maybe that was what he tried to do, for him and for us. Staying quiet on his own, as invisible as possible. I had to actually raid into his room and steal his clothes to be able to wash and iron them, much to his complaint. He wanted to cause no trouble and I think that he was really uncomfortable, embarassed to need and stay with his daughter.”
Ennis Jr. knew that life in the past decades hasn’t been easy for many people, especially in rural America. Not that it was THAT easy even now, for as many people living in the city suburbs... He figured out that when his grandparents divorced, Ennis Sr. had to pay alimony for his daughters, find a new home, etc. It would be a nightmare nowadays, not to mention forty years ago but couldn’t his grandfather be able to save any money? Was it so difficult to find a decent job and keep it? That was a thing he couldn’t understand.
“However, when he realized someone needed him, that I needed him, your grandpa managed to find a better accomodation here in Casper, a good work for him before your birth and a work for me when you were one year old and could be baby-sitted. When he was home and I had to work in the evening he stayed with you all the time. And when I could stay home at night, he was there just like you may only expect from your husband. I couldn’t be more lucky and happy: there were no more moments for me to feel alone or insecure. The period between my divorce and his death has been the hardest but also the sweetest in my life.”
Another sigh, and this time her eyes were wetting.
“We both worked hard to make things going and sometimes I feel I was even able to give him back some sort of happiness. The sense of family. The warmth of being needed and loved. Then... then... just as we were all settled and I met Alex... he had that damn heart-attack.”
She paused, as to calm down and not to stumble over the words.
“Doctors said it wasn’t that bad but he simply wasn’t recovering because he wasn’t... fighting. He was letting go.” Alma Jr. sniffed and got a paper tissue to dry up her nose even if it wasn’t wet at all.
“It was like he knew I was safe and needed no further support.
My father! Mr Ennis ‘tough-skin’ Del Mar! How could it be he wasn’t fighting? How could he think I needed him no more? I couldn’t believe he had fought all of his life and now he wasn’t able to face the most important battle. Only when I looked into his eyes for the last time, laying on that clean, white bed, I realized he simply couldn’t stand it anymore and was looking for rest, for peace. Rest for his body, peace to his soul.”
When Alma Jr. rubbed her eyes with the tissue, Ennis Jr. tried to look somewhere else not to unease her. He could understand the depth of her feelings but he wasn’t really able to get... into the story, yet. Something was missing. Something capable of making him understand where all of that misery came from.
“Your grandfather definitely was not a man of speech but if you knew him enough you could deal with him without needing many words. I know he loved me. He loved my sister and he even loved my mother for a while. For sure, he did love Jack Twist.”
She said it clearly now. Ennis Jr.’s grandfather was gay. Just like he himself was.
“My grandfather was a queer, then, huh? Seems your name-giving was some sort of predestination...”, he said, half smiling.
Alma Jr. twisted her lips. “Well, that’s not the way he considered himself, said he kept saying he only loved one man but... yes.”
“What do you mean? Being gay it’s not a matter of how many people you’ve slept with!”
“Oh, please! Don’t go there. I told you I’m happy if YOU are happy but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to talk about sex, yet. Especially same-gender sex, you know.”
Ennis tried to reply but she hushed him with a quick gesture.
“Let me go on, please. We’ll have our talk on the matter later on, dear. I’m quite curious to know how you manage the bees and flowers’ affair...”
Ennis Jr. blushed in embarassment and tried to go back to the main topic. “What exactly do you know of their story, anyway? If my grandfather wasn’t fond of talking, how could you know what happened?”
“Well, we spent four years together and I learnt he was more inclined to talk when we were alone, none else around. It wasn’t easy in the beginning but then he somehow managed to open himself up. I think he was even relieved sometimes, being able to tell me what he had to keep for himself for twentyfive years.”
“Twentyfive years?! But...”
“Yes.” she nodded. “He met Jack Twist when he wasn’t twenty, right before marrying my mother. Since then, they kept seeing each other once in a while for twenty years.”
“Wow!” he said, amazed, and all of a sudden a whole set of questions came to his mind, in rush. Where does that Jack Twist live, now? Did his mother ever meet him since? Did he come to his grandpa’s funeral? Well, he certainly did. He was so excited about the possibility of meeting his grandpa’s former lover he almost lost his bathrobe while reaching for his mother’s hands.
Just then Ennis Jr.’s mobile rang.
Chapter 2 - Part 1
Disclaimer: The characters of Brokeback are not mine and belong to Annie Proulx (God bless her!).
Summary: Life hasn't been easy for Alma Jr. since she divorced in November '86 and only her baby son, Ennis Jr., gives her hope for a brighter future...
By 7.30 am Ennis Jr. made it back, swet darkening his t-shirt’s collar and armpits. As he usually did, he followed the squared path edged by South Wolcott, East 2nd, South Beverly and East 15th St.. Sometimes, when he had no time for the full run, he cut down South Conwell, passing by the Cemetery. Maybe he wasn’t the fastest runner in the world but he definitely featured endurance.
He took off his shoes and left them outside, went in and put the mp3 player and the keyring on the small bowl purposely staying on a shell next to the main door. As everybody was used to simply throw keys in there, his poor iPod was hopelessly scratched, looking much older than its four months of age.
His mother was already up and getting breakfast ready - thanks God, he thought - so he quickly greeted her and went for a hot shower. Well, more than hot. Actually almost boiling if it wasn’t for the security valve. Ennis liked standing under the water jet, slightly shifting position as the temperature made his skin painful. Much to his mother complaint, of course. He got use to know it was time to get out when Alma Jr. started to scream. This time, however, he heard none shouting from the kitchen so he enjoyed the shower longer than the usual ten minutes. To him, it was some kind of ritual of “sterilization”: he could feel the stress, the fatigue and all of those bad thoughts sliding down with the water into the drain.
Ennis closed the tap and got out of the shower-box, the bathroom a dense cloud of steam. He dried himself with one of the big towels hanging on the wall and then grabbed his bathrobe. He went down to the kitchen, barefeet, while drying up his hair with a smaller towel.
“Will you EVER get used to slippers, at least when you get out of the bathroom, honey?”, said his mother, drawning his son’s eyes on the damp footprints he left on the floor.
“Mph!”, was all she got in reply before he sat at the table.
Definitely, his mother was in a good mood today: fried eggs with bacon, toasted bread, pancakes and strawberries where ready on the plates, together with the usual bottle of fresh milk, a whole pint of black coffee and a copy of the Casper Journal. When he tried to grab it Ennis’s hand got slammed by a wooden ladle.
“Don’t you dare, honey!”, Alma Jr. said with a devilish look in her eyes.
Rubbing his painful hand top, Ennis slowly began to chew his breakfast, planning a retaliation. He turned on the TV to watch the news and in twenty minutes they both were done.
When his mother went to the sink with the dirty plates, Ennis spoke in a low, soft voice.
“Mom... I’ll take care of that later myself: I’m due to the evening shift, today. Please, sit down and tell me about my grandpa.”
He heard a sigh, her shoulders raised and lowered.
Alma Jr. went back to her chair and slowly massaged her temples, as if it helped making up the speech.
“Well, you know your grandpa died on 1989 - when he was fortyfive - and you were almost four so you can barely remember him, I guess.”
Ennis nodded. Trying hard, he could recall his grandfather’s tender embrace, his warmth, his eyes carefully looking after him when he played outside in the small garden directly leading to the street. But it was more a sensation than a real vision of him. A clash of sound and colours. Maybe a smell of worn leather.
“Apart from you, he was the person I loved more in my whole life. More than your father, more than my mother or my sister. We always shared a special link. When I was a child, I could stare at him in adoration for minutes, simply looking at him while he smoked or had a beer. When he realized, he’d raised me in his arms, grinning, and asked what I was doing. I was addicted to those precious, kind and rare smiles of him. Later on they became less frequent and eventually vanished after the divorce. He always did his best, as far as I can say, to stay close to my sister and me, even if we could met him once a month.”
Ennis Jr. already knew about the divorce as his grandfather lived with his daughter almost six years long while his ex-wife, grandma Alma Sr., still lived in Riverton with her new husband, Bill, and the children she got from him. “Children” who were over thirty by now, anyway.
His aunt Francine moved to Vermont many years ago and Ennis Jr. only saw her once in a while. Once every one or two years, actually.
“What you probably don’t know is the reason of MY divorce from your father.”
“Well”, he replied, “I hardly recall him as well, considering he never showed up in the past ten years. Not that I miss him, anyway. Someone here has been more than good on his own for both, you know.”
He catched a smirk on his mother’s lips for the appreciation.
“Fact is, apart from the usual issues a couple may face, Kurt and I really started to quarrel after your grandfather joined us and especially after he found out my father’s past affair with Jack Twist.”
That name, again. Ennis Jr. was agog, eagerly waiting for the full story.
“Only THEN I realized how few I knew of Kurt Long and how easily you may get involved with someone you really start discovering when you live together, day by day, and not before. Your father wasn’t really a bad person and I’m sure he loved me but he showed such a hatred towards my father I just couldn’t stand. Even now I can’t understand how the hell I didn’t catch up with him being that homophobic before I married him.”
She sighed again but it seemed more a sigh of relief to Ennis Jr.
“I guess, however, it’s because it wasn’t an issue before my father. Anyway, I was pregnant with you, I had no job and the house we were in was simply too expensive for us. Obviously, I was paid alimony by your father - as he was the one in desertion - but money was never enough, especially after your birth.
Till then, my father didn’t live: he survived. When he moved in after the ranched he worked for was sold, he just tried to be as discreet as possible. He was out working most of the day and went back home for dinner only, barely talking, and then out again for a beer in a pub and back home to sleep. It almost seemed he wasn’t living with us at all and maybe that was what he tried to do, for him and for us. Staying quiet on his own, as invisible as possible. I had to actually raid into his room and steal his clothes to be able to wash and iron them, much to his complaint. He wanted to cause no trouble and I think that he was really uncomfortable, embarassed to need and stay with his daughter.”
Ennis Jr. knew that life in the past decades hasn’t been easy for many people, especially in rural America. Not that it was THAT easy even now, for as many people living in the city suburbs... He figured out that when his grandparents divorced, Ennis Sr. had to pay alimony for his daughters, find a new home, etc. It would be a nightmare nowadays, not to mention forty years ago but couldn’t his grandfather be able to save any money? Was it so difficult to find a decent job and keep it? That was a thing he couldn’t understand.
“However, when he realized someone needed him, that I needed him, your grandpa managed to find a better accomodation here in Casper, a good work for him before your birth and a work for me when you were one year old and could be baby-sitted. When he was home and I had to work in the evening he stayed with you all the time. And when I could stay home at night, he was there just like you may only expect from your husband. I couldn’t be more lucky and happy: there were no more moments for me to feel alone or insecure. The period between my divorce and his death has been the hardest but also the sweetest in my life.”
Another sigh, and this time her eyes were wetting.
“We both worked hard to make things going and sometimes I feel I was even able to give him back some sort of happiness. The sense of family. The warmth of being needed and loved. Then... then... just as we were all settled and I met Alex... he had that damn heart-attack.”
She paused, as to calm down and not to stumble over the words.
“Doctors said it wasn’t that bad but he simply wasn’t recovering because he wasn’t... fighting. He was letting go.” Alma Jr. sniffed and got a paper tissue to dry up her nose even if it wasn’t wet at all.
“It was like he knew I was safe and needed no further support.
My father! Mr Ennis ‘tough-skin’ Del Mar! How could it be he wasn’t fighting? How could he think I needed him no more? I couldn’t believe he had fought all of his life and now he wasn’t able to face the most important battle. Only when I looked into his eyes for the last time, laying on that clean, white bed, I realized he simply couldn’t stand it anymore and was looking for rest, for peace. Rest for his body, peace to his soul.”
When Alma Jr. rubbed her eyes with the tissue, Ennis Jr. tried to look somewhere else not to unease her. He could understand the depth of her feelings but he wasn’t really able to get... into the story, yet. Something was missing. Something capable of making him understand where all of that misery came from.
“Your grandfather definitely was not a man of speech but if you knew him enough you could deal with him without needing many words. I know he loved me. He loved my sister and he even loved my mother for a while. For sure, he did love Jack Twist.”
She said it clearly now. Ennis Jr.’s grandfather was gay. Just like he himself was.
“My grandfather was a queer, then, huh? Seems your name-giving was some sort of predestination...”, he said, half smiling.
Alma Jr. twisted her lips. “Well, that’s not the way he considered himself, said he kept saying he only loved one man but... yes.”
“What do you mean? Being gay it’s not a matter of how many people you’ve slept with!”
“Oh, please! Don’t go there. I told you I’m happy if YOU are happy but it doesn’t mean I’m ready to talk about sex, yet. Especially same-gender sex, you know.”
Ennis tried to reply but she hushed him with a quick gesture.
“Let me go on, please. We’ll have our talk on the matter later on, dear. I’m quite curious to know how you manage the bees and flowers’ affair...”
Ennis Jr. blushed in embarassment and tried to go back to the main topic. “What exactly do you know of their story, anyway? If my grandfather wasn’t fond of talking, how could you know what happened?”
“Well, we spent four years together and I learnt he was more inclined to talk when we were alone, none else around. It wasn’t easy in the beginning but then he somehow managed to open himself up. I think he was even relieved sometimes, being able to tell me what he had to keep for himself for twentyfive years.”
“Twentyfive years?! But...”
“Yes.” she nodded. “He met Jack Twist when he wasn’t twenty, right before marrying my mother. Since then, they kept seeing each other once in a while for twenty years.”
“Wow!” he said, amazed, and all of a sudden a whole set of questions came to his mind, in rush. Where does that Jack Twist live, now? Did his mother ever meet him since? Did he come to his grandpa’s funeral? Well, he certainly did. He was so excited about the possibility of meeting his grandpa’s former lover he almost lost his bathrobe while reaching for his mother’s hands.
Just then Ennis Jr.’s mobile rang.