original fiction: till the one day when the lady met this fellow
till the one day when the lady met this fellow
Have you ever heard of The Brady Bunch? They were seventeen when their father found out they were sleeping together, lying quietly, betraying everyone’s trust in whispers behind closed doors.
3000 words. PG-13. for worthless_hope at inrevelations.
till the one day when the lady met this fellow
-
They were seventeen when their father found out they were sleeping together, lying quietly, betraying everyone’s trust in whispers behind closed doors. Don’t think badly of them, though. She means his dad. Her stepfather. For all she cares, semantics don’t make much of a difference but that’s the way it goes. Billy is still her brother-she knows this like she knows the grass is green and the sky is blue. It’s there and you can’t change it. You almost don’t notice it. At times (and this is what matters), she has loved him and hated him like you can only love or hate a brother.
In the end, though, it is all a matter of perspective:
Billy is her brother, but they are not biologically related.
Thank goodness!
Because Sally and Billy have been in love since they were ten years old.
(And this is what matters.)
-
Have you ever heard of The Brady Bunch?
Sally always jokes that her ‘blended’ family is the perverse version of that show. But the truth is she used lie when she was fifteen, trying to play cool. There is nothing perverse in Billy or in her or in anyone else. Besides, Sally is too young to have ever seen that show.
-
The evening before Christmas Eve, for the first time in years, her surrogate family gets together. Sally almost can’t believe it, and this makes her sad. They were always very close, but things fell apart when her mum died and Billy’s dad died. Nobody handled it well: a tragedy is not supposed to be the ending of families made out of patchwork. They had been little but tattered rags before they came together. Life had no right to pull them apart again.
Magically-what’s the harm in believing in Christmas miracles?-, and thanks to Aunt Harried, it didn’t. This year they had come together for Christmas. Aunt Harriet had insisted. It had been too long since they all had been together. After the accident, Sally and Billy had gone away to college, each to one corner of the world. If their parents were dead, were they still siblings? They hadn’t been able to handle the thought of being pulled apart by a force they couldn’t control, so they had taken the matter into their own hands. They parted ways; for the first time since they could remember, they said goodbye to each other and to everyone else. Their little brother, Tommy, had gone to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle John. That was three years ago.
It was Christmas, though-almost three years too late-and they were a family. Aunt Harriet had promised this year was going to be special and Sally had no wish to disappoint her.
“How was Europe?”
The question sounds tattered and unoriginal, but it’s the best Sally can do. For weeks she’s been worried, barely sleeping. She was going to see him again. She was going to see him again! Somehow, she hadn’t dared to hope he would cross the world on his own. She was prepared to meet a French girlfriend and be introduced to her as my sister. She was prepared for her heart to crack open, and have nobody to blame but herself. She was prepared for any kind of resentful impudence. She was prepared for the pain, for the awkwardness, for everything but to find him sitting on her borrowed bed when she arrived. He was waiting for her when she entered the room, smiling wide and eager to explain Tommy’s evil plans to spend the night with his high-school girlfriend, Mary-Ann.
“Boring,” he grins, standing up and walking closer. Her heart beats frantically as she stares at him and does nothing. It’s been too long, but it hardly seems like a day has gone by. “Aren’t you going to give me hug?”
She doesn’t have time to answer. He hugs her like a brother would hug a long-gone sister, naturally, as his arms could do nothing but circle and squeeze and hold. Trembling, she pulls away before getting carried away and lingering longer than it would be appropriate. Half-blushing, she stares at him in silence and nods quickly as soon as he finishes explaining the situation to her, babbling and stuttering as he always did. The situation is fairly simple: Aunt Harriet’s house isn’t big enough for two siblings to sleep in separate bedrooms; that is what his tale amounts to. Her step-aunt is a proud austere mother of four boys and she owns a modest house. Violet, her older sister-her older biological sister-has brought her fiancé, Nick, and his two-year old daughter, Ginny. Tommy, of course, has invited his girlfriend to spend the holidays with them. It’s hard to keep pace with so many names and people, but Sally’s got ten year’s worth of practice. She was supposed to share the room with Tommy’s girlfriend, Mary-Ann, but Tommy had begged his older brother-his older biological brother- to agree to a midnight change. According to Billy, Tommy’s exact words had been: Please, Please Billy! Aunt Harriet is such an old-fashioned nun! When will I get another chance like this to spend the night with Mary-Ann?
Sally ends up chuckling. She’s partly amused, but also, she is partly nervous.
Billy shrugs. He feigns indifference, but she knows better. He smiles as if asking for permission, nodding in the direction of the floor. “I brought my sleeping bag.”
She chuckles again. Curious -that’s her one thought. She can’t believe it’s been three years since she last saw him. After five minutes of an awkward yet tender conversation, she has lost the memories of the long long time spent without him. Right now, he’s thirteen years old again. He’s kissing her for the first time. He’s dying her hair purple while she sleeps. She sighs. Despite a handful of well-intentioned, half-hearted attempts to get away from each other, they have never been apart. Not really. They can’t be apart. She’s twenty-years old and she can’t remember the last time she saw him before today. And yet, she knows that she will never forget the first.
There is one unspoken promise they had kept against their will. She broke it when she answered to Aunt Harriet’s email with a pink-colored, blinking ‘YES’; but he broke it more when he got on a plane and crossed the world to wait for her sitting on a toy car-shaped boy-sized bed. Still they don’t say it out loud, but they think it: it’s been three years of an absence dragged-on by spite, immature insecurities, false reproaches and phantom jealousy. But they are back where they started from. Perhaps, they never moved at all.
You’re my brother.
It feels right, but no one else can understand. People think family is about blood ties and biology and random physical resemblances. His eyes are dark as ebony and hers as so pale that they look transparent. His hair is black and thick and hers is blond and ridiculously curly. They grew up together, ate together, and slept together. They shared a bathroom for the most awkward and most wonderful ten years of their life. They used to fight like cats and dogs in the backseat of the car during family trips. He is her brother, but blood has nothing to do with how she feels.
She keeps quiet, but moves to sit on her little cousin’s bed, taking his hand in hers and pulling him beside her. She rests her head on his shoulder as if this was five years ago: they had broken up for the first time but they couldn’t be apart or hate each other or act like enemies because that’s the thing about families -the harder you push, the tighter they grow.
“I’ve missed you,” she murmurs quietly after a while.
His voice quivers. “Sally…”
His whole body is shaking. He fell in love first. He fell in love harder. He fought for her time and time again while she grew up and further apart and further scared. She knows this now, but there is little she can say to mend past mistakes. She is still too scared to say what she really feels, what she knows to be certain. I don’t know how to live without you and you don’t know how to live without me because we have never been apart. Run run run as I might catch you. Run run run until I faint. Here. Now.
“Forgive me,” is all she can say, closing her eyes and praying for a Christmas miracle.
He leans closer, and grabs her face inside his hands. She nods, doesn’t say anything. (Silence means consent.)
They end up right where we began. Together. As if they never pulled away.
-
Surprisingly, they manage to spend the following day alone.
Errands! is their excuse. They use the loneliness and the silence of the snow to talk and kiss like pre-teens. They play in the snow and remember growing up. They don’t mention Europe or California or any false life they have tried to live away from each other because nothing is furthest from their mind. Instead, they make plans for the future and indulge in happy memories of the past, while they bicker over what kind of Christmas present they should buy for little Ginny. Billy pretends he doesn’t know anything about babies and sally pretends she doesn’t feel like crying every time she remembers that her mom is now a grandma-a step-grandma, but what difference does it make?-but she is gone and she will never meet Ginny or see how beautiful Violet looks now that she’s a redhead.
Billy cheers her up by pretending to be stupid, as he used to do to irritate her when they were fourteen. “What is the step-daughter of my step-sister?” he frowns, “Is she my step-niece? Or my step-step nice?”
She smacks the back of his head and tries to run away so he doesn’t return the gesture, but he is quicker and she wants to be caught. He grabs her waist and pulls her to him and tickles her sides until she is laughing so hard that there is no need to hide her tears anymore. She has fallen against his chest and his arms are circling his waist and he is kissing the tip of her nose and she doesn’t remember why she was feeling so sad, buying toys for their new niece.
“Moron,” she whispers against his lips.
His teasing smile feels warm and cozy. Like coming home for Christmas. “That’s the way you like it.”
Her feet sink into the cold soft snow as their lips meet. Freezing water slips into the seams of her boots, making her socks wet. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t feel cold. She can only smell the familiar scent of Billy’s skin and feel his warm hands around her waist. His touch is so tender, so comforting, so reassuring. He doesn’t feel like coming home for Christmas; she was wrong. Inside his arms-again again again-she feels as if she had never left.
-
When her mum died, and her stepfather died, her dad-her biological dad-had wanted her to go and live with him in California. She loved her father-she truly did love him, despite the distance-but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought. Overnight, her surrogate family had dissolved, become a painful memory, made out of sadness and ghosts, and yet she remained exactly where she were, nailed to the ground by endless roots, deeper and broader than she could imagine.
Home is where the heart is .
Aunt Harried told her that, a few days after the funeral, when she still hadn’t begun packing clothes, books and memories. (Aunt Harried always spoke in proverbs-she still does and she is usually never wrong.) That day she elaborated. “That is why your mom and your stepdad are still with us,” she smiled. Sally understood perfectly what she meant. Home is where the heart is.
She didn’t travel to California that fall. She waited until next year, until she summoned up enough cowardice to fill in college applications that would take her as far as she was able to think of going without breaking down and asking Billy to hug her, to tell her they would pull through loss and loneliness together and things would be back to what they used to be, when they were only children and being in love felt like pulling a harmless prank on their parents, like being up to some dangerous but innocent mischief. Before things got serious. Before people got hurt.
It’s been almost four years and still nobody talks about the accident; except Aunt Harriet. She claps her hands and looks up to Heaven and, surprising everyone, she smiles across the dinner table. She raises her glass of soda to offer a toast, but she doesn’t have time to speak, because in less than a second Billy has risen to his feet and his drumming his cake-stained fork against his glass of champagne.
This time they don’t hide. This time they don’t lie.
Billy stands up and speaks aloud words like ‘family’ and ‘love’ and ‘sister’ and ‘forever’. Sally flushes. She blames the two glasses of white wine she’s had during dinner and shakes off any trace of shame from her eyes. She doesn’t hide. She won’t make the same mistakes again. She looks up and holds Billy’s eyes in hers and nods at everyone’s blushing cheeks. They are a family and they are not scared of a bit of awkwardness; they can handle making each other uncomfortably. Billy and Sally are in love; they always have been. Everybody knows this like everybody knows Billy is serious when he says that a family needs to be together, always, and that there won’t be any more lonely Christmases for anyone ever again.
It’s been some rough three years. But they all have finally found their way back home.
-
One year later, they all get together for Christmas once again, at Aunt Harriet’s modest but welcoming country house. Sally’s family always took pride in keeping their promises.
This year, thank God, things flow slightly more smoothly. The residual awkwardness is gone. There have been several family reunions during the year-Violet and Nick’s wedding, Tommy’s graduation from high school, Thanksgiving weekend...-so they are all to being around one another once again, almost as if they had never stopped being a close-knit family. Aunt Harriet’s four boys are older and already used to spending time with their cousins. Little Ginny knows them all by name and talks like a cute little parrot. Once again they are, as they always were, a blended merry happy family.
About to get merrier and happier and even more blended.
“But... can you two get married? Isn’t it illegal to marry your sister?”
In response, Billy gives him a good smack in the head. Sally rolls her eyes: after so many years, the unspeakable word that begins with an I and ends with a T doesn’t scare anyone anymore. Uncle John laughs out loud, as also do Nick and the boys. Only Aunt Harried frowns, and moves closer to Tommy to explain: “Legally, they are not brother and sister, Tommy.”
The explanation is more for the sake of Tommy’s new girlfriend, Jennifer, than to appease Tommy’s teasing. He was only four years old when his father married Sally’s mum, but he understands perfectly well his brother’s emotional situation. Tommy was, after all, the keeper of their secrets in the early days of their relationship. His new girlfriend, however, in spite of being over twenty and wearing too much make-up, can’t seem to be able to pick her jaw up from the floor. Of course, it is all Tommy’s doing-Sally’s has no doubts. Knowing as he did beforehand than Billy was going to announce their engagement at the dinner table, he sure would have accidentally forgotten to tell his new girlfriend that his brother Billy and his sister Sally weren’t truly related. Typical of Tommy.
Sally feels like smacking his head herself, but she can’t, because Violet is holding her hand beneath the table, squeezing it lightly, mutely encouraging her and soothing her anxiety. I am so happy for you, little sister. Violet’s silent support gives her the strength she needs to rise to her feet and stand up next to Billy.
Entwining their fingers and clearing her throat, she smiles. “Since I can remember”-her voice quivers slightly, but she doesn’t care: she needs to say what she needs to say. This family is as much her own family as it is Billy’s; he can’t be always the one to bear responsibility. “Since I can remember,” she begins again, “Billy has always been with me. I can’t imagine my life without him like I can’t imagine my life without any of you, guys. We are a family. I know we are young but we love each other.” Almost involuntarily, her eyes travel to Billy’s. She squeezes his hand and waits for him to squeeze back without looking away. “We have grown up together. We are still growing up together.”
In the end, it is that simple. Everybody knows. Everybody understands.
Aunt Harriet cries and hugs them as hard as Tommy teases them for their cheesy speech. Billy keeps on smacking his head, hugging him at the same time. Ginny squeals loudly, sensing everyone’s excitement, and she begins flying from arms to arms over everyone’s head. The boys begin running and screaming around the table to celebrate that the adults are occupied with other stuff and Uncle John starts running right behind them, trying to grab them and get them to be quiet. Nick and Jennifer get dragged into a massive family hug and Violet takes photographs of everyone, announcing with a happy grin that she will use everyone’s pictures to prepare an exhibition.
Over the happy commotion, Sally and Billy smile quietly, staring at each other without saying a word.
---
Have you ever heard of The Brady Bunch? They were seventeen when their father found out they were sleeping together, lying quietly, betraying everyone’s trust in whispers behind closed doors.
3000 words. PG-13. for worthless_hope at inrevelations.
till the one day when the lady met this fellow
-
They were seventeen when their father found out they were sleeping together, lying quietly, betraying everyone’s trust in whispers behind closed doors. Don’t think badly of them, though. She means his dad. Her stepfather. For all she cares, semantics don’t make much of a difference but that’s the way it goes. Billy is still her brother-she knows this like she knows the grass is green and the sky is blue. It’s there and you can’t change it. You almost don’t notice it. At times (and this is what matters), she has loved him and hated him like you can only love or hate a brother.
In the end, though, it is all a matter of perspective:
Billy is her brother, but they are not biologically related.
Thank goodness!
Because Sally and Billy have been in love since they were ten years old.
(And this is what matters.)
-
Have you ever heard of The Brady Bunch?
Sally always jokes that her ‘blended’ family is the perverse version of that show. But the truth is she used lie when she was fifteen, trying to play cool. There is nothing perverse in Billy or in her or in anyone else. Besides, Sally is too young to have ever seen that show.
-
The evening before Christmas Eve, for the first time in years, her surrogate family gets together. Sally almost can’t believe it, and this makes her sad. They were always very close, but things fell apart when her mum died and Billy’s dad died. Nobody handled it well: a tragedy is not supposed to be the ending of families made out of patchwork. They had been little but tattered rags before they came together. Life had no right to pull them apart again.
Magically-what’s the harm in believing in Christmas miracles?-, and thanks to Aunt Harried, it didn’t. This year they had come together for Christmas. Aunt Harriet had insisted. It had been too long since they all had been together. After the accident, Sally and Billy had gone away to college, each to one corner of the world. If their parents were dead, were they still siblings? They hadn’t been able to handle the thought of being pulled apart by a force they couldn’t control, so they had taken the matter into their own hands. They parted ways; for the first time since they could remember, they said goodbye to each other and to everyone else. Their little brother, Tommy, had gone to live with Aunt Harriet and Uncle John. That was three years ago.
It was Christmas, though-almost three years too late-and they were a family. Aunt Harriet had promised this year was going to be special and Sally had no wish to disappoint her.
“How was Europe?”
The question sounds tattered and unoriginal, but it’s the best Sally can do. For weeks she’s been worried, barely sleeping. She was going to see him again. She was going to see him again! Somehow, she hadn’t dared to hope he would cross the world on his own. She was prepared to meet a French girlfriend and be introduced to her as my sister. She was prepared for her heart to crack open, and have nobody to blame but herself. She was prepared for any kind of resentful impudence. She was prepared for the pain, for the awkwardness, for everything but to find him sitting on her borrowed bed when she arrived. He was waiting for her when she entered the room, smiling wide and eager to explain Tommy’s evil plans to spend the night with his high-school girlfriend, Mary-Ann.
“Boring,” he grins, standing up and walking closer. Her heart beats frantically as she stares at him and does nothing. It’s been too long, but it hardly seems like a day has gone by. “Aren’t you going to give me hug?”
She doesn’t have time to answer. He hugs her like a brother would hug a long-gone sister, naturally, as his arms could do nothing but circle and squeeze and hold. Trembling, she pulls away before getting carried away and lingering longer than it would be appropriate. Half-blushing, she stares at him in silence and nods quickly as soon as he finishes explaining the situation to her, babbling and stuttering as he always did. The situation is fairly simple: Aunt Harriet’s house isn’t big enough for two siblings to sleep in separate bedrooms; that is what his tale amounts to. Her step-aunt is a proud austere mother of four boys and she owns a modest house. Violet, her older sister-her older biological sister-has brought her fiancé, Nick, and his two-year old daughter, Ginny. Tommy, of course, has invited his girlfriend to spend the holidays with them. It’s hard to keep pace with so many names and people, but Sally’s got ten year’s worth of practice. She was supposed to share the room with Tommy’s girlfriend, Mary-Ann, but Tommy had begged his older brother-his older biological brother- to agree to a midnight change. According to Billy, Tommy’s exact words had been: Please, Please Billy! Aunt Harriet is such an old-fashioned nun! When will I get another chance like this to spend the night with Mary-Ann?
Sally ends up chuckling. She’s partly amused, but also, she is partly nervous.
Billy shrugs. He feigns indifference, but she knows better. He smiles as if asking for permission, nodding in the direction of the floor. “I brought my sleeping bag.”
She chuckles again. Curious -that’s her one thought. She can’t believe it’s been three years since she last saw him. After five minutes of an awkward yet tender conversation, she has lost the memories of the long long time spent without him. Right now, he’s thirteen years old again. He’s kissing her for the first time. He’s dying her hair purple while she sleeps. She sighs. Despite a handful of well-intentioned, half-hearted attempts to get away from each other, they have never been apart. Not really. They can’t be apart. She’s twenty-years old and she can’t remember the last time she saw him before today. And yet, she knows that she will never forget the first.
There is one unspoken promise they had kept against their will. She broke it when she answered to Aunt Harriet’s email with a pink-colored, blinking ‘YES’; but he broke it more when he got on a plane and crossed the world to wait for her sitting on a toy car-shaped boy-sized bed. Still they don’t say it out loud, but they think it: it’s been three years of an absence dragged-on by spite, immature insecurities, false reproaches and phantom jealousy. But they are back where they started from. Perhaps, they never moved at all.
You’re my brother.
It feels right, but no one else can understand. People think family is about blood ties and biology and random physical resemblances. His eyes are dark as ebony and hers as so pale that they look transparent. His hair is black and thick and hers is blond and ridiculously curly. They grew up together, ate together, and slept together. They shared a bathroom for the most awkward and most wonderful ten years of their life. They used to fight like cats and dogs in the backseat of the car during family trips. He is her brother, but blood has nothing to do with how she feels.
She keeps quiet, but moves to sit on her little cousin’s bed, taking his hand in hers and pulling him beside her. She rests her head on his shoulder as if this was five years ago: they had broken up for the first time but they couldn’t be apart or hate each other or act like enemies because that’s the thing about families -the harder you push, the tighter they grow.
“I’ve missed you,” she murmurs quietly after a while.
His voice quivers. “Sally…”
His whole body is shaking. He fell in love first. He fell in love harder. He fought for her time and time again while she grew up and further apart and further scared. She knows this now, but there is little she can say to mend past mistakes. She is still too scared to say what she really feels, what she knows to be certain. I don’t know how to live without you and you don’t know how to live without me because we have never been apart. Run run run as I might catch you. Run run run until I faint. Here. Now.
“Forgive me,” is all she can say, closing her eyes and praying for a Christmas miracle.
He leans closer, and grabs her face inside his hands. She nods, doesn’t say anything. (Silence means consent.)
They end up right where we began. Together. As if they never pulled away.
-
Surprisingly, they manage to spend the following day alone.
Errands! is their excuse. They use the loneliness and the silence of the snow to talk and kiss like pre-teens. They play in the snow and remember growing up. They don’t mention Europe or California or any false life they have tried to live away from each other because nothing is furthest from their mind. Instead, they make plans for the future and indulge in happy memories of the past, while they bicker over what kind of Christmas present they should buy for little Ginny. Billy pretends he doesn’t know anything about babies and sally pretends she doesn’t feel like crying every time she remembers that her mom is now a grandma-a step-grandma, but what difference does it make?-but she is gone and she will never meet Ginny or see how beautiful Violet looks now that she’s a redhead.
Billy cheers her up by pretending to be stupid, as he used to do to irritate her when they were fourteen. “What is the step-daughter of my step-sister?” he frowns, “Is she my step-niece? Or my step-step nice?”
She smacks the back of his head and tries to run away so he doesn’t return the gesture, but he is quicker and she wants to be caught. He grabs her waist and pulls her to him and tickles her sides until she is laughing so hard that there is no need to hide her tears anymore. She has fallen against his chest and his arms are circling his waist and he is kissing the tip of her nose and she doesn’t remember why she was feeling so sad, buying toys for their new niece.
“Moron,” she whispers against his lips.
His teasing smile feels warm and cozy. Like coming home for Christmas. “That’s the way you like it.”
Her feet sink into the cold soft snow as their lips meet. Freezing water slips into the seams of her boots, making her socks wet. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t feel cold. She can only smell the familiar scent of Billy’s skin and feel his warm hands around her waist. His touch is so tender, so comforting, so reassuring. He doesn’t feel like coming home for Christmas; she was wrong. Inside his arms-again again again-she feels as if she had never left.
-
When her mum died, and her stepfather died, her dad-her biological dad-had wanted her to go and live with him in California. She loved her father-she truly did love him, despite the distance-but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought. Overnight, her surrogate family had dissolved, become a painful memory, made out of sadness and ghosts, and yet she remained exactly where she were, nailed to the ground by endless roots, deeper and broader than she could imagine.
Home is where the heart is .
Aunt Harried told her that, a few days after the funeral, when she still hadn’t begun packing clothes, books and memories. (Aunt Harried always spoke in proverbs-she still does and she is usually never wrong.) That day she elaborated. “That is why your mom and your stepdad are still with us,” she smiled. Sally understood perfectly what she meant. Home is where the heart is.
She didn’t travel to California that fall. She waited until next year, until she summoned up enough cowardice to fill in college applications that would take her as far as she was able to think of going without breaking down and asking Billy to hug her, to tell her they would pull through loss and loneliness together and things would be back to what they used to be, when they were only children and being in love felt like pulling a harmless prank on their parents, like being up to some dangerous but innocent mischief. Before things got serious. Before people got hurt.
It’s been almost four years and still nobody talks about the accident; except Aunt Harriet. She claps her hands and looks up to Heaven and, surprising everyone, she smiles across the dinner table. She raises her glass of soda to offer a toast, but she doesn’t have time to speak, because in less than a second Billy has risen to his feet and his drumming his cake-stained fork against his glass of champagne.
This time they don’t hide. This time they don’t lie.
Billy stands up and speaks aloud words like ‘family’ and ‘love’ and ‘sister’ and ‘forever’. Sally flushes. She blames the two glasses of white wine she’s had during dinner and shakes off any trace of shame from her eyes. She doesn’t hide. She won’t make the same mistakes again. She looks up and holds Billy’s eyes in hers and nods at everyone’s blushing cheeks. They are a family and they are not scared of a bit of awkwardness; they can handle making each other uncomfortably. Billy and Sally are in love; they always have been. Everybody knows this like everybody knows Billy is serious when he says that a family needs to be together, always, and that there won’t be any more lonely Christmases for anyone ever again.
It’s been some rough three years. But they all have finally found their way back home.
-
One year later, they all get together for Christmas once again, at Aunt Harriet’s modest but welcoming country house. Sally’s family always took pride in keeping their promises.
This year, thank God, things flow slightly more smoothly. The residual awkwardness is gone. There have been several family reunions during the year-Violet and Nick’s wedding, Tommy’s graduation from high school, Thanksgiving weekend...-so they are all to being around one another once again, almost as if they had never stopped being a close-knit family. Aunt Harriet’s four boys are older and already used to spending time with their cousins. Little Ginny knows them all by name and talks like a cute little parrot. Once again they are, as they always were, a blended merry happy family.
About to get merrier and happier and even more blended.
“But... can you two get married? Isn’t it illegal to marry your sister?”
In response, Billy gives him a good smack in the head. Sally rolls her eyes: after so many years, the unspeakable word that begins with an I and ends with a T doesn’t scare anyone anymore. Uncle John laughs out loud, as also do Nick and the boys. Only Aunt Harried frowns, and moves closer to Tommy to explain: “Legally, they are not brother and sister, Tommy.”
The explanation is more for the sake of Tommy’s new girlfriend, Jennifer, than to appease Tommy’s teasing. He was only four years old when his father married Sally’s mum, but he understands perfectly well his brother’s emotional situation. Tommy was, after all, the keeper of their secrets in the early days of their relationship. His new girlfriend, however, in spite of being over twenty and wearing too much make-up, can’t seem to be able to pick her jaw up from the floor. Of course, it is all Tommy’s doing-Sally’s has no doubts. Knowing as he did beforehand than Billy was going to announce their engagement at the dinner table, he sure would have accidentally forgotten to tell his new girlfriend that his brother Billy and his sister Sally weren’t truly related. Typical of Tommy.
Sally feels like smacking his head herself, but she can’t, because Violet is holding her hand beneath the table, squeezing it lightly, mutely encouraging her and soothing her anxiety. I am so happy for you, little sister. Violet’s silent support gives her the strength she needs to rise to her feet and stand up next to Billy.
Entwining their fingers and clearing her throat, she smiles. “Since I can remember”-her voice quivers slightly, but she doesn’t care: she needs to say what she needs to say. This family is as much her own family as it is Billy’s; he can’t be always the one to bear responsibility. “Since I can remember,” she begins again, “Billy has always been with me. I can’t imagine my life without him like I can’t imagine my life without any of you, guys. We are a family. I know we are young but we love each other.” Almost involuntarily, her eyes travel to Billy’s. She squeezes his hand and waits for him to squeeze back without looking away. “We have grown up together. We are still growing up together.”
In the end, it is that simple. Everybody knows. Everybody understands.
Aunt Harriet cries and hugs them as hard as Tommy teases them for their cheesy speech. Billy keeps on smacking his head, hugging him at the same time. Ginny squeals loudly, sensing everyone’s excitement, and she begins flying from arms to arms over everyone’s head. The boys begin running and screaming around the table to celebrate that the adults are occupied with other stuff and Uncle John starts running right behind them, trying to grab them and get them to be quiet. Nick and Jennifer get dragged into a massive family hug and Violet takes photographs of everyone, announcing with a happy grin that she will use everyone’s pictures to prepare an exhibition.
Over the happy commotion, Sally and Billy smile quietly, staring at each other without saying a word.
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