LOYALTY AND SEDITION by TM
Part 15

Ratings: PG

Summary: This is dedicated to my late father, who taught his little princess the sport of kings, and many other things. Thanks Daddy.

Spoilers: Nah.
 

MICHAEL:

November 17, 2000
 

I thought I was better. I have to be. I finished all my drugs.

Then why do I feel like such shit today?

I slept through my alarm, had to race through the shower, cut myself shaving-in three places-why do I even bother?-forgot my calculator, and my pen died in Casey's class. I was able to borrow one, but I've gotta get better organized. Plus my dad gave me shit for going to school when I was still sick-he thinks I ought to be home sleeping.

Right now, I could handle that.

But it's Thursday and I work, and I've gotta get a move on here.

Casey wants us to do some personal expository writing, write a vignette. Mostly she assigns stuff related to TV, current events, major issues type stuff. She expects us to keep personal stuff in the journal-which I've been really lame at keeping up at the past three weeks. This time she wants us to write about a seminal event in our lives.

I had to look up the word 'seminal.' Fucking PhD's.

Casey looks real wrecked. Her little boy had meningitis last week and almost died. He's okay now, but he can't hear. That's about as much as she told the class.

I have to remember to have her call Ally. Ally would help her. Ally knows a lot about deaf people. And she never minds helping anybody. She'll even help people during cocktail hour, which for Ally is a sacred thing.

I wonder how Luke's doing. He cancelled class last week, too. I bet he's shot to hell. Guess I'll find out tonight.

So I'm wondering what the fuck I'm gonna write about. Jesus, what was a seminal event in my life?

Casey says if you can't put your finger on a specific event, then just start writing and see what sort of pattern develops. She claims that one will.

Right. I'm just doodling all over the map here. For some reason, I keep thinking about the day we all went sailing.

It was Father's Day, and Ally went and rented out a Catalina 36. I'd never been on a boat before, but she invited my dad and me to go with her and Langly and the kidlets. I was wondering who was gonna sail the monster, turns out it was Ally. I was pretty surprised-I mean, let's face it, Ally won't admit it, but she's real princess-y, and I don't think of her as an outdoorsy type girl. But apparently her daddy felt his little princess should learn the sport of kings, as she calls it, and she does know her way around a boat, I soon found out. She said it was her way to remember her dad, he's been dead a long time but she still misses him a lot, and also it would be a hell of a lot of fun.

I hate to admit it, but since I was never on a boat before, I was real nervous. I swim real good and all, but being on a boat is something different. And I didn't really believe Ally could handle it. She's a little bitty thing, and the boat was huge. But she seemed to know what she was doing, and once we got past the breakers and out into the bay, I felt a lot better. She was real calm and she was telling everyone what to do, and even Miranda knows her place when her mom's the skipper apparently, because she doesn't argue with her. I loved what she said before we left the dock. She tells us all that a sailboat is not a democracy, and she's the captain, and that means you do what she needs you to do. She wasn't power tripping, which she does do sometimes, but just telling everybody the rules, no big
deal.

Everybody had to take turns trimming the sails, and Ally showed us all how to do it. It was pretty easy, and I found I could actually get the hang of it pretty fast. The wind was kind of dead when we started out, it was a slow trip, but in a little while, it kicks up and we are hauling butt. At first it's making me real jumpy, but not for long, because everyone was just relaxing and enjoying it, and Ally was having tons of fun. The boat and the wind don't blow her away at all. She likes it. She's having fun showing Langly how to do it, and he actually listens to her for once. Good thing, too, because he didn't have a clue when we started.

Then it gets pretty rocky, the wind is REALLY kicking ass, and she starts to get kind of seasick, and she says no worries, she always gets seasick, but once she pukes she'll be fine. I don't find this very reassuring, but once she leans her head over the side a few times-by the way, she says don't ever puke into the wind, it'll fly right back on you-and 'feeds the fish,' as she calls it, she's okay again. We're all kind of grossed out, but she doesn't think it's a big deal. Langly keeps asking her if she's okay and she assures him she's fine, and my dad is worried about her but she tells him to lighten up, she's fine, this always happens and she's not dead yet.

She must be feeling better because she wants a beer pretty soon after that, and in no time we're all getting real drunk and laughing our asses off and telling stories. That's when I find out that Ally learned to sail from her dad. She says she was eight, and she was on her dad's boat with her mom and dad and two brothers, she says she only had two at the time, and this guy and his wife that her dad wanted to come to work for him, and she's feeling real sick, she's hanging over the rails, and her dad tells her to come over to the helm. And she's real nervous because the helm is her dad's place on the boat and it's his boat and he doesn't like anybody fucking with it, and he's trying to impress this guy and his wife, so she figures she's gonna get yelled at. But instead her dad takes her and shows her how to read the
telltales on the sails and read the wind, and he shows her how to take the boat up into the wind. And she says she's real scared because her dad is real picky about his boat and she doesn't want to make any mistakes. But he's not yelling at her, he's telling her to look at the horizon and work the boat and she won't feel so sick. She's real worried at first that he's gonna get mad if she screws up, but he's not letting her mess up, so she's starting to have fun with that. And she still feels really icky, but after a while, she's having fun and she's not even thinking about it that much. And to this day, she loves sailing.

"Even if I still get seasick," she's laughing about it. "That was the best day ever with my dad." She's talking about it and she looks like she's this happy eight-year-old again.

"I remember when one time, I won for math team in my district, I was in fifth grade," Langly's jumped on to story time. "And my dad wasn't there when I won, but the next day, it's Friday, but he says I don't have to go to school. I'm wondering what's up, and he says it's a surprise. So we're driving, and I've never seen where he works, but we go to his lab at Fort D, and I'm real excited because I've never gone there, and I'm kind of scared because it's a huge place and I'm not sure even what my dad does, I know he's a microbiologist but I'm ten years old, I have no clue. He lets me play around in his lab, I never used a microscope before that, and he's showing me all sorts of stuff, and he showed me how to use his slide rule. That was so cool. And it's like he's showing me off to everybody. I never
knew he talked about me even. It was such a cool day." He looks kind of sad, even though he's real excited when he talks about it.

I asked him where his dad was now, and he said, "Dead since I was twelve." Langly's 37. That's 25 years.

That's longer than I've been alive.

Told you I could do the math.

Miranda tells us all about the time her dad took her stargazing for the first time. She was six, and her dad took her to the Mojave Desert for a Perseid meteor shower. He told her it was shooting stars and she says she was lying in the back of his pickup truck with her mom and dad and she keeps asking him if that was a shooting star. And he says, keep watching, you'll know. And suddenly she sees one, and she's like, now I know! Ally's smiling when she tells this one. It's a good memory for the whole family apparently.

And then she's talking about Langly's birthday last year, when she and Byers and my dad all went to King's Dominion. She says Ally hates those places, so it was just them, no mom that day. And she says she had so much fun riding every scary ride with Langly about a thousand times and they laughed so hard and ate junk all day and he won a stuffed kangaroo for her, which lives in the mess she calls her room. Langly's smiling. He and Miranda fight a lot, but he cares a lot about her. She ought to count herself lucky.

My dad's listening, but he's real quiet. I don't know about his dad, my grandfather. He died before I was born. I don't know any of my dad's family. I barely know my dad.

I don't have a story to tell.

Shelby has a hard time talking about her dad. It's real raw for her. But she does mention that about three weeks before he died-she can't bring herself to say he got killed-he took her shopping on N Street and he got her her knee-high Doc Martens and the purple hat she's wearing. The purple hat is so godawful, it's got sequins and feathers on it, it's not a boat hat at all.

She'll probably keep that hat forever. I know I would, even if it makes my dad's hats look tame by comparison.

Talk starts turning to work, to things at TMB, what kind of things we think are going to happen during the election, and then we start talking about computers and what's on TV and how tired we all are and how we don't get out enough to just have fun...you know, the usual stuff. We drink more beer, get more wasted, tell bad jokes. I'm amazed Ally can still control this boat, but she can. She tells us that when she used to sail to Catalina, they give you lists of all the places on the island where you can get supplies. First thing on all the lists is beer and ice. She doesn't think this is insignificant, and has another cold one. It's my turn to run scullery, as she calls it, which is a fancy term for get me another beer, get me something to eat. I like working the sails a lot better, but everyone has to take turns, except her. She says this is because she ran for enough beers for her dad in her day, and being skipper is her revenge. She's laughing a lot today. The only time she turns a little sad is when she says her dad would have been 70 a week before, but she salutes him wherever the hell he is with her Dos Equis.

Ally stays in the bay, she doesn't know the Atlantic waterways and she's not ready to venture into open water here yet, so after a few hours she decides it's time to come about and head back, which will take several more hours. Not to mention she doesn't want to pay overtime on this boat. Dad asks her what a rental like this goes for. She says don't ask, but she's laughing about it at least. This was before Mom left her a bundle of cash, and she and Langly have money problems sometimes, but she's not dealing with it today.

Am I the only one who feels sad today?

On the way back, I'm sitting on the side rails, we're heeling hard and Ally wants some ballast on the starboard side, so it's Langly and my dad and me. Going back is harder, she has to tack because she's against the wind and she keeps shifting us around from side to side.

I think that's what women do, anyway.

Anyway, my dad's been real quiet. Not down quiet, but just, like he's thinking or something.

"I lost my father when I was eight." He says it real softly, like he doesn't want this to be a group thing or something.

I didn't know this. He doesn't talk about his people, at least I don't remember him doing it when I was little, but I was only six and it was a long time ago.

"My father was career Army. Intelligence and communications. He was in the Pacific theater when I was born in '44, and he didn't see me until I was almost a year old. At least that's what my mother told me. He'd only seen my sister once. You remember your Aunt Irene, don't you?"

"Vaguely."

"She was three years older than me. My dad had only seen her once, and on that trip I think was when they got me going."

"Where's she now?"

"Irene died of ovarian cancer when she was 46." He kind of makes it clear he doesn't want to talk about this. I don't really, either. Not to be cold or heartless, but I just don't.

I'm a lot more interested in what he says about his dad.

"After WWII ended, he was posted to Germany. I was three when we went, and I don't remember a lot, but I think I remember Germany being sort of a happy
time. We were all together and I think we were happy."

I'm trying to think of my dad as a 3-year-old. Hard to imagine.

"We were then posted to Japan when I was five, and when I was seven, he was called to Korea, the conflict was brewing heavily there. He left my mother and my sister and me in Japan for a while, but then we went back to Baltimore, which is where we were from originally.

"I remember when he had to leave, I was outside playing with some other kids on the base and I didn't really want to interrupt my game with them, so I said goodbye kind of fast. I'd miss him, but you expect certain things in a military family.

"And that was the last time I saw him. He was killed in Korea. It was my eighth birthday when we got the news."

Well, I now have a little insight into why he doesn't do birthdays too much.

He doesn't want to go on about this, I can tell. My dad is the most private guy in the world, and he's not big into telling stuff about himself. Just that he told me this, I'm sort of amazed.

And maybe he does understand a little what it's like to be told you don't have a dad anymore. I never knew that before. I just figured he had no idea.

And here he does. And not only that, he doesn't get a second chance.

I do.

He's quiet after that, just sipping a beer and working on a tan-we both tan, we're lucky that way. My sister and mom, they're freckled and they have to watch it in the sun, but I got my dad's darker skin.

I haven't gotten a tan in years, and it feel great.

I look at Ally and Langly, and I have to laugh. They pile on the SPF 45, but they're both so fucking pale that they're the new poster children for Red Lobster now. My dad hassles them both to remember their sunscreen, and they keep glopping it on each other, but they're red anyway.

"You'd think they'd have learned after the last time," my dad's grumbling. I don't know what he's exactly talking about, but it sounds like they cooked themselves to a crisp one too many times before. Then I remember from Ally's journal the first time they had sex-well done. For some reason, this is making me laugh.

Although the idea of having sunburn down there does make me cringe a little.

This will probably never be a problem for me. Not only do I not burn, but at the rate I'm going, I'll never get laid outside, either.

Or inside. Or on the kitchen table or in the car or in a dark alley...

Okay, Frohike, don't go there.

By the time we get back to harbor, everybody's real tired, even the girls have shut up. My dad nodded off for a little while even. Langly's bitching about being burned, but he shuts up when Ally tells him he should've kept his shirt on.

It's getting colder now, and you can see the sun going down.

But it's been a great day. I don't even know why, but it was like the best day I had in so long. Nobody argued, I got a great tan, and I learned a few things about my dad.

There's still a lot of work to do once you tie up, so we're putting everything away and packing up stuff and we're all beat and nobody's talking much. Ally shows my dad and me how to fold the genoa and she goes to put the mainsail away with Langly then.

The sucker's huge and it's real heavy, and it's got to be folded in a certain way so when you pull it out of the bag next time you can just buckle it on real easy and it's not all messed up.

We finally get it done and Langly's hosing down the boat and being Langly, he hoses everyone else, too. Not that it matters-we all got drenched on the trip. But Miranda wrestles it away from him and she's spraying everybody now. I'm a dripping mess and so's everyone by the time we're ready to bail out.

We're headed to the cars and my dad finally says something.

"It was nice to be able to celebrate Father's Day for a change."

I think that was as close as he dared to tell me he loved me at that time.

I don't know why, but I go home feeling a lot less empty somewhere than I did before.
 

But while I don't feel empty, I do start to feel real angry.

The one thing we all have in common is our dads got ripped out from under us, one way or another. I mean, Byers, his dad's still alive but I've met the dude and he is COLD. So it's almost like not having a dad.

Ally had her dad the longest, and she was only 27 when he died, she says. 27's not old. I'll be 27 in 2 1/2 years. My dad was 8, Langly was 12, Miranda was 13, Shelby was 14. I was 6.

What the fuck?!

Except for Ally, we were all KIDS.

I suppose knowing I'm not alone should make me feel better, but really it makes me feel worse. Why should this be something that we all have in common? I mean, it's a pretty terrible common ground to meet on.

I guess you could call this a seminal event in my life, because I believe now that we get something from fathers that we don't get anywhere else. I have no idea what it is, but it's there and when I didn't have it I missed it.

And it scares me a lot, because my dad didn't have his father, and I didn't have mine.

What would happen to me if I had kids?

If I had kids?

You've got to be kidding. I can barely take care of myself.

But at least my dad picks up some of the slack these days.
 

Casey's probably going to hate this, but it's the best I can do right now.

I'm so tired.

I wish I was home with my dad right now.

Why am I sick again?

Shit.
 

It's been pretty quiet, midterms are over, only four customers this afternoon. I'm waiting on Kelly right now. It's almost the time she comes.

I've got my head on my astronomy book which I'm using for a pillow right now.

I can't breathe again, and this time it's even worse than last time.

I did finish all the pills. I know I did. And my dad made sure I did.

I want to go home right now. Everything just hurts like hell.

No can do. It's work time. I need the money. I've got to do this.

And Kelly's here and she's ready to go.

She asks me if I'm okay. I tell her sure, I'm just kind of tired.

And I can't stop coughing and my head is killing me and my back hurts and my sides hurt and my arms and legs are made of lead and I can't talk and I can't breathe.

Other than that, I'm fine.

We're studying sigma notation and definite integrals. This stuff is cake for me.

When my brain's not lost in a wet fog.

I can't even think here.

Kelly asks me if she can get me something.

Oh, Kelly, you could get me a lot of things, but I tell her I'll settle for some tea right now. She says she'll go and get me some.

I must look really terrible if she feels that sorry for me.

She comes back with a large paper cup. I try to give her a buck, but she says forget it.

We go on and I'm trying to work through the problems with her.

It's not happening and she knows it. I'm so fogged up I don't know what's going on. I tell her I'm sorry, I can't do this today. She's gonna be pissed.

But instead she takes my arm and tells me she's taking me home. She asks me where I live. I almost give her the Sandbourne Road address, but that's where the offices are, behind Chateau Langly.

Where do I live?

Okay, now I remember, it's 3117 Lindell Avenue, Apartment 5, in Alexandria. I think it's 3117. Or was it 3177? I think it's 3117.

Then I tell her, I can't leave, I have to finish my shift and I have astronomy. I'm in her class.

She promises to share her notes with me.
 

Kelly doesn't know Alexandria and I'm having a hard time navigating her around. All I want is my bed.

If Kelly wants to come up and share it with me, that'd be cool, but I'm afraid today I wouldn't be good for much.

I think I remember to say thank you to her.

It's only about a hundred miles from the curb to my room.

Where I end up collapsing, with my boots and my jacket still on.

END OF PART 15