31
TRUE NORTH | Part Eight
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Conclusion
It was the summer before his junior year of high school. Ollie was fifteen -- sixteen in a week -- and the only thing on his mind was getting his Driver's License. He spent his summer evenings at hockey practice; his summer days watching TV, playing on the Internet, and baby-sitting Henry, then eight years old.
In the living room, Ollie sat in front of a fan, half-watching in Days of Our Lives, when Henry came in the house. The boy walked slowly, deliberately, over to his brother and stood in front of the TV.
"Move," Ollie commanded.
He didn't budge. He stared towards his brother, but didn't seem to be looking at him.
"Why are you such a little freak?"
Henry walked over to his brother and tugged on his shirt. The boy was completely silent and in shock.
Ollie immediately got up off the couch, his tone completely transformed. "Henry, what's wrong?
Henry continued to pull on Ollie's clothes, and led him out of the house without a word. On the back porch, Mike, Henry's best friend, was sobbing.
"What is going on? Is Mike hurt?"
"No," Henry said. "Just come with me." These were the only words he would speak for the rest of that day.
Henry led him into the woods. Once they made it past the wall of willow trees, Ollie knew what his brother needed to show him.
In the distance, he saw some alien shape hanging off of True North. It dangled, and swung back and forth a bit, though there wasn't even a hint of wind.
As they got closer, Ollie realized what the shape was -- it was a person, a man, and he was strung up to the tree house by his neck. With that realization, Ollie broke free of Henry's grip and ran towards the treehouse.
When he was about fifteen feet away, he finally looked at the man's face.
It was his father.
His father had left a note.
Ollie pressed his mother for answers after the police, the reporters, and the body were all gone from their property. She insisted that his father's death had been an accident, but Ollie wasn't stupid. He asked her incessantly for the note - he knew there had to be one - and finally, instead of denying its existence, his mother let slip, "You're too young to read it."
It was the day of the funeral. The widow June North held a reception at their house for family and friends. Ollie, forced to wear a suit he usually hated but unphased by it, dodged the family's priest -- they were Catholic then -- and avoided his uncles and cousins of his father's side, the True Norths of the family.
Using the reception as a distraction, Ollie snuck into his parents' bedroom and searched for the note. He knew that she must have kept it. The same masochistic need that drove him to find it had forced her to keep it.
He looked in her dresser drawers, in the nightstand, under the pillows -- finally, he found it between the mattress and the box spring.
There were three envelopes. One addressed to June, one to Henry, and one to --
There it was. A plain white envelope with one word written on it, printed in his father's handwriting --
Weak-kneed, he sat down on his parents' bed. He loosened his tie and fingered the envelope. It was already opened -- by his mother, no doubt. Read only by her and then, certainly, by the police.
He imagined taking the note out, unfolding it, and reading it over. It began:
I know what you are, Oliver.
He chose not to continue the thought. He knew he could not make his father into a monster, despite his best efforts. It would've been much easier to mourn a father he hated -- who'd hated him -- but David North, calm, kind, and appropriately stern, was a good man and a good father.
In his mind, he opened the letter again. This draft read:
I love you, Oliver. I'm so sorry.
It offered no explanation, just an apology. Ollie knew it wasn't his fault, despite his Catholic conscience and attraction to self-blame. He knew it was money or marital problems, perhaps both. Or a hidden depression that finally overcame his father. Or it could've been a secret life that David had kept well-hidden from his family, a secret so big it drove him to suicide. The boy chose not to speculate any further.
He started crying for the first time since he found his father's body. He sat on the edge of his parents bed, the envelopes still in his hand, and sobbed.
He couldn't bring himself to actually read the note. Not then. Not ever.
There were a few boards still nailed to the tree, one or two which had once made up the ladder up to True North. Ollie still remembered the day his Uncle Rob came and took it down, not long after his father had died.
Ollie passed the tree, with Chris, as they strolled through the woods, wasting time before dinner. The hour or so that Chris has been at the North house had gone smoothly. His family greeted the new addition warmly, especially James, sniffing and licking, welcoming him to their home. Both his mom and Henry had been quite friendly and uncharacteristically normal. The four of them easily slipped into a conversation standing in the kitchen as June finished the meal. Ollie had brought his boyfriend home for Thanksgiving and it was no big deal. This was too much for him, and he had to escape from the house with his gay lover, lest it become too mundane.
There was something about having Chris there with him, at his home, in Vermont, out in the back woods, that made Ollie swell with guilt. Everything was going well, but he still felt awful about bringing him there. But still, it was a surprise to Ollie when, no long into their walk, he found himself blurting out: "My dad didn't die in a fire."
They stopped walking. Chris looked puzzled.
As detached as he could be, he revealed: "He killed himself. My dad killed himself."
Ollie gazed down at the ground, kicking around some dead leaves and pine needles. "I don't talk about it. We don't talk about it. My family, I mean. But I wanted to tell you, so you would know." He had planned to stop there, but he didn't. He found himself talking, about his father, about True North, about times before and after his death. He delivered a monologue for ten full minutes, never once pausing, never once looking at Chris. The whole time, he still stared down, relieved, overwhelmed, closer to the verge of tears than he'd been in ages. "I didn't mean to lie. I just didn't know how to--"
"Its OK, Ollie." Chris touched his boyfriend's arm, forcing him to look up, his eyes were filled with the threat of tears. And in the aftermath of truth, Ollie saw in his face, for once, no pity for him -- just compassion. Chris led him to a fallen tree nearby and, in the crisp autumn air, they sat, holding gloved hands in silence for a long while.
"Ollie," Chris finally said, "I have something to -- something to say." Ollie looked up at him, curiously. Chris immediately faltered. "Shit. This is so not the right time for this."
"For what?"
Chris ignored the question, and began talking to himself. "But there's never going to be right time, a perfect moment, is there?"
"What?" Ollie was puzzled.
His hand toyed with something inside his jacket. "I'm so bad with this kind of stuff."
"What are you--? Are you -- breaking up with me?"
"What?"
"Oh, God. You are. You're dumping me. On Thanksgiving."
"No! God no, Ollie! I'm not breaking up with you! I want to ask you to, um, to --" He dropped whatever he was fumbling with in his jacket. "Shit!"
Chris quickly fells to his knees and frantically searched for what he had dropped. He found it and hid it in his palm before Ollie could see what it was.
He shifted. On one knee, he looked up at Ollie. Suddenly serious, suddenly confident, Chris revealed the contents of his hand.
It was a ring.
On their way out of the woods, they kissed, under the willow trees, behind the house. Not far from True North. But far enough.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/31/05 at 7:04 PM | Comments (4)
Tagged: True North
22
TRUE NORTH | Part Seven
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Seven
« Previous (Part Six) | Next (Conclusion) »
The cart was a good one, new. It didn't have a squeaky or crooked wheel, and it glided around the store without a single jerk or sound. Ollie cursed his luck for picking the one uninteresting, non-defective cart in the supermarket.
His mother needed cranberry sauce, marshmallows, french-fried onions, milk, and wine. She's asked him to go alone, but he begged for company, afraid to return to the place he'd slaved away at for four years during high school and early college. He always felt something between pride and guilt when he returned to the store. He worried that, in their eyes, he was the big, bad college boy, returning to rub his success in the noses of the lifers and high school kids.
Ollie lazily pushed the cart behind his mother, as she slowly browsed the shelves of silver cans with colorful labels. She quickly placed a can of green beans in the basket, and with her back to him once again, said, "So Henry tells me you're thinking of marrying Chris."
He stopped the cart immediately, in the middle of the aisle. She kept walking, browsing the shelves.
"You two plan this? He said you'd said the same thing."
"That's funny."
"Hilarious."
"Well, are you?"
"Mom, I am not having this conversation while we shop for marshmallows."
"We've already got marshmallows, honey. Now we're onto the cranberry sauce."
He couldn't do much else but sigh. "Why do you always do this?"
"Don't be such a Drama Queen, Oliver." It was her new word. She'd used it exactly three times since she'd picked him up at the bus station. She must've started taking notes while watching Will and Grace. Watching that and Rosie O'Donnell were his mother's idea of supporting his homosexuality. She liked Ellen, too -- both of her sitcoms -- before she was cancelled. "The grocery store's as good a place as any to have a heart-to-heart."
She was into having important conversations in odd places. Some people get off on having sex in the kitchen or in public; Ollie's mother liked to air revelations in places where people were likely to catch them. Sometimes she was nonchalant. Other times she was intense. She was always embarrassing.
"Not right now, mom," he said. "We'll talk about this later."
As if he'd planned it, they were interrupted by the store's intercom. "Attention shoppers," someone announced. "The store will be closing in fifteen minutes at one o'clock. At this time, please make your final selections and bring them to the front registers. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving."
"Shit. It's almost one?" Ollie said.
"Well, that's good. Should get back home anyway. The turkey's in the oven, and I don't trust your brother to watch it."
"Chris is going to be here any minute!"
He ran for the wine and she grabbed some frozen peas. They met at the front and then stood in silence, impatient in the long checkout line. Ollie avoided eye contact with the familiar faces that worked there. He picked up a copy of TV Guide and flipped past the bright, glossy pages right to the ugly, newsprint program listings. For some reason, just as he noted a Thanksgiving marathon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he started talking to her again.
"I am thinking about it, mom." He threw the magazine on the belt with the groceries.
"Thinking about what, honey?" she said, barely glancing up from her issue of some women's mag.
"Marrying him. Asking him to marry me. Civil Union me. Whatever."
She looked up, a blank stare, then threw the magazine on the belt with the TV Guide. Her face filled with emotion as his revelation sunk in.
"I'm thinking about it --just thinking --but I --"
"Oh, Oliver," she gushed. She hugged him tight. "I didn't think you were actually -- oh, this is so exciting!"
As they both became aware of their surroundings, and the eyes of their fellow customers, their hug grew awkward and loose.
"I'm so--so--" she stumbled.
"I know."
"Oh, damn it. I forgot the milk." She broke their embrace and ran off towards the dairy cooler.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/22/05 at 1:16 PM | Comments (5)
Tagged: True North
21
TRUE NORTH | Part Six
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Six
« Previous (Part Five) | Next (Part Seven) »
He was six when his father built the tree house. During the sweltering month of July, young Ollie spent his days with his pregnant mother -- at the local pool, the air-conditioned supermarket, or at the doctor's office -- and his evenings and weekends in the woods with his father. Ollie would play and pretend to help while his dad worked away up in the tree.
Ollie wandered off one day, not far from the construction site. He played under the willow trees, which formed a wall between their back yard and the woods. He played with sticks and rocks, and sang to himself.
He was poking around with a stick, exploring, when he discovered the thing under the tree.
The beast, with mangy fur and beady eyes, starred up at him. A blank stare. The squirrel was covered in blood and still. Ollie knew it was dead.
He dropped his stick and ran back towards the tree house.
"Dad!" Ollie cried up to him. "Dad! There's a -- a thing, in the willows!"
"A thing?"
"A dead thing. A squirrel."
His father came down from the tree and scooped the boy up into his lap.
"Dead things can't hurt you, Ollie. It's just a squirrel. It probably died -- probably died for a reason."
The boy asked questions, about the squirrel, about death. David did his best to answer. As soon as his father stopped talking and took him off his lap, Ollie began to whimper some more. He couldn't help it. "Can we bury it, dad?"
"Come on, Ollie," his father said. Ollie tried to remember the voice as angry or frustrated. But he knew, as always, it was calm and firm. "It's just a dead squirrel. Toughen up, OK? Be a True North."
True North. He'd heard the expression countless times in his youth, and it always made him giggle. The words had a silly sound when strung together, and their meaning eluded him. He didn't know what a True North was, aside from being the name of his grandfather's fishing boat. He knew it had some deep, serious meaning, a proud meaning held dear by all the men in the North family. But Ollie always knew, before and after he was six years old, that he never was, nor never could be, a True North.
He stopped crying as soon as his father used that dreaded phrase. He pulled the bottom of his t-shirt up, wiped his eyes and nose, watching his father climb back up into the tree. He examined his father's face, clenched and sweaty, as he pounded nails into the fort.
It was in that moment that he decided - for his grandpa, his father, and his unborn little brother - to name his tree house "True North."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/21/05 at 12:21 PM | Comments (4)
Tagged: True North
19
TRUE NORTH | Part Five
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Five
« Previous (Part Four) | Next (Part Six) »
"Shift, Henry," Ollie said firmly, trying to remain calm and patient as the car began to buck wildly. "Come on now, shift. Shift. Shift!"
Just as he was about to lose his cool, the car stalled. The brothers' heads jerked forward and then back, and then all was still and quiet inside the vehicle.
Ollie took a deep breath. He looked out the window and briefly around the abandoned parking lot. No one was around to see, except the skeletal trees, left naked in the dead November air. He turned on the heat, and then turned to his brother.
"That was... OK," was all he could think to say.
Henry sighed. "Thanks."
"I really think you're getting the hang of standard. We may not get it down today, but by the end of the weekend."
Ollie knew the boy was frustrated. His plain, handsome face was seemingly expressionless, but Ollie could read it. "You'll get it," he assured him.
"I know. Eventually." He shrugged. "Thank God you're here to teach me, Ollie. Mom's so fucking neurotic. We tried this once, and we about killed each other."
"You never want Mom to teach you how to drive. I went out with her once, and that was about my fill. Dad was a much better --"
He caught himself and couldn't finish. Henry immediately looked up, and their eyes caught each other briefly. Henry looked away quickly, but Ollie still stared.
"How's Boston?" Henry mumbled.
"Don't change the subject. We're teaching you how to drive here," he said lightly. He paused for a minute, to regroup. "Boston's great. Did Mom tell you I got a job? Teaching art at a school down there."
"Yeah. She said it's at Chris's school."
"Yeah, it is. And I'm not going there because of him. It's just a perk."
"Are you going to marry him? Mom seems to think you are."
Flustered, Ollie completely forgot about their driving lesson. "I-I don't know. Where'd she get that idea?"
"I don't know. She just said."
"You know I'd tell you something like that."
"I know. Well, I figured."
They were sharing a moment, and Ollie knew he couldn't let it pass, not without saying what he felt he needed. "Regardless of me and Chris, I'm never going to be that far, but--" He examined his brother. "Mom's a strong lady, but she still needs your help. I know she appreciates all that you do. I do too. You're the man of the house now." He realized how foolish he sounded only after the words escaped.
"Oh, come on. Lay off."
"I'm serious. You're a good kid, and I'm proud of you."
Henry blushed. "Shut up."
"God, I sound like an Afterschool Special. But you know I love you, kiddo."
"Don't go all queer on me now, Ollie," he joked.
Ollie pretended to take offense. "Hey!"
"Oh, wait. Too late."
"Well, you little prick, are you ready to learn to drive?"
Instead of answering, Henry started the engine. He muttered, "Love you too."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/19/05 at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)
Tagged: True North
17
TRUE NORTH | Part Four
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Four
« Previous (Part Three) | Next (Part Five) »
Ollie met Chris two years earlier. At the end of their first date, Chris walked Ollie home. "This is my stop," Ollie had announced. He hoped he sounded cute and playful, but he really felt reluctant for the night to end. They'd met that afternoon for coffee, which stretched into dinner (Ollie's treat), which segued into a long walk around the city. The two men gazed at each other as they stood outside of Ollie's dorm. Ollie's heart wasn't the only thing that swelled as he stared at the beautiful senior and fantasized about kissing him. He was desperately nervous, and afraid that he was reading the seemingly mutual flirtation wrong. Ollie blurted out a suggestion - "Let's do this again." - to which Chris quickly followed up - "How about Friday?" Ollie suddenly, awkward and automatically, extended his hand. "Friday works. Can't wait." He smiled as Chris shook his hand. He had a strong grip, and the physical contact sent shivers up Ollie's spine. They said good-bye and Ollie rushed upstairs to his room. As he craned his neck out his window to watch Chris walk away, he gushed to his roommate about his perfect first date.
That Friday, on their second date, after their first kiss, Chris confessed to Ollie that the handshake was completely adorable. Soon after, they fell in love.
Two months after the handshake, they made love for the first time. Ollie, practically a virgin in gay terms, finally felt that the time was right for them. Later that same night, Ollie talked to Chris about his father for the first time.
They lay together, spooning, talking. They talked about many things, little things, and Chris recalled a funny anecdote about his father that had both boys in stitches. After they stopped laughing, Chris breached the subject that Ollie desperately tried to avoid.
"What's your dad like?" he asked.
Ollie suddenly stiffened up. His grip around Chris loosened. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"My dad. He... died," he confessed.
Chris rolled over to face him. "Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't..."
Ollie managed a weak smile, more of grimace, to show Chris that he was alright. "It's OK. It's been a while now." Chris placed his hand on Ollie's chest and slowly brushed his fingertips over the light blanket of hair. "I was fifteen. Henry, my brother, was eight." He paused. "There was... a fire." He instantly felt regret. He clenched his eyes shut and tightened his body.
"I'm so sorry, Ollie. Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. I'm good. Really."
Chris ran his fingers through Ollie's hair and gazed in his eyes.
Very seriously, he said, "I love you."
Ollie smiled. "I love you too."
They hugged and held each other for a long while. Ollie had nearly drifted off to sleep when Chris spoke again.
"So... remember when I said that thing... um, to thank your dad for certain, um, 'genetic endowments'? I didn't mean to be offensive."
Ollie pulled back and looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. Then he cracked up. Chris followed suit.
[This story pre-dates Make The Man and it's similar scene. I haven't decided which story it fits better in yet.]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/17/05 at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
Tagged: True North