Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different JTL Version
63. End Of A Feud
'Sandi, I had another idea, but … you're President of the Fashion Club and I need to you to tell me whether it's a good idea or a bad one.'
'Well, go ahead, Quinn.'
Sandi's voice had only its normal 'hoity-toity' tone, not the extra 'hoity-toity' one that meant she was ready to rubbish whatever Quinn said automatically, or try to use it to score a point against Quinn somehow. Quinn was encouraged.
'I was thinking, seeing as so far the ideas we had inside the Club don't seem to have worked out, maybe we could ask somebody outside the Club who's good at dealing with bummed-out stuff.' Quinn deliberately didn't mention anybody specifically.
'Hmm …', went Sandi, as if she were thinking about Quinn's suggestion. 'There's that boy who turned out to be your brother, Quinn, he's supposed to be good with bummed-out stuff. But he's not really interested in female things, is he?'
Stacy gave out a quiet "But he.."
Quinn bristled. 'If your attitude is that he's not the right sort of person …', she began, but Sandi interrupted in a hurry.
'Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, Kuh-winn. It was my suggestion, if you recall, that your brother might have qualities to help in this situation, but as President of the Fashion Club, I have to consider the most suitable way of approaching an outsider.'
'Well, sometimes you can get Sonny to do things by paying him money—if you think that would be suitable, of course, Sandi.'
'In view of the serious nature of this crisis, I could call an emergency meeting and suggest spending from the Club treasury.'
Quinn squeezed her hands together. 'That is such a good idea, Sandi!'
'Now, as President I delegate you to speak with your brother. Depending on your report, I will decide whether to negotiate with him officially.'
"I, he might not take my word. Maybe his girl, um, his friend should?" Quinn looks over at Stacy.
"I could. He is my Gay BFF afterall."
Sandi narrows her eyes. "As trendy as it is, I think you should have found some one else."
Stacy fidgets with her scrunchie. "But, like, have you found a Gay BFF?"
Sandi replies after a sigh that was between exasperated and annoyed. "There are so few to choose from in Lawndale."
Stacy and Quinn share a look before leaving for Quinn's house.
Sonny had been struck by the way Quinn was worked up about her little 'crisis' in the Fashion Club. Perhaps she was more worried about problems there than she would otherwise have been because of the drama going on at their own house. Of course, he could use a little distraction from that himself. And he was being offered money. He'd made it a condition of giving his help, though, that he didn't have to speak to the whole Fashion Club together. Interviewing the members separately was probably better technique anyway, but he didn't think he could have stomached dealing with them all at once regardless of recommended procedure.
Now he was going over his interview notes. The problem began with Stacy and Tiffany buying identical dresses. Sandi said it would give powerful ammunition to the Club's 'enemies' if two of its members were seen wearing the same dress. (Sonny couldn't see this. If he'd been writing a list of their 'enemies', he would have put himself near the top, and he couldn't see how he could use this so-called 'ammunition', but never mind.) According to Sandi, it would (mysteriously) be even worse if they wore their dresses at different times and these unspecified 'enemies' started spreading a rumour that there was actually only one of the dresses and they were sharing it. They couldn't return the dresses to the shop where they'd bought them, the two-week grace period having elapsed. Sandi had come up with the ingenious idea of settling the matter with a debate, but Tiffany had not properly grasped the concept. She'd got as far as stating a conclusion, that she should have the dress, but had not understood what it meant to advance a supporting argument. Stacy's elaborate speech was for nothing as Tiffany couldn't grasp the majority of what was said. Sandi and Quinn had had some strange compunction about ruling her the loser by default.
The solution was simple and Sonny started on his report at once—he had arranged to provide it in writing so he wouldn't have to speak to any of them again. If only one out of Stacy and Tiffany could have the dress, one of them needed to buy the other's. A sealed-bid auction could determine which one would pay, and the price. This way no one could accuse him of bias for Stacy because of their friendship. It was so easy to explain that Sonny padded out the report with some lagniappe, suggesting options for the high bidder: keep the second dress in storage as a replacement for when the first wore out; give it as a present to a relative or friend living somewhere else; sell it to a second-hand shop in a remote location to recoup some money; use the material to make something else (Fashion Club members were bound to have better ideas than Sonny did about matching accessories for which it would be suitable).
He wished the problems at home could be solved as easily.
His cousin Erin was getting a divorce from her husband Brian; his aunt Rita, with the assistance of her mother, Sonny's grandmother, had guilted Sonny's mother into handling the legal aspects of the divorce; Erin had been supposed to come to stay with them to discuss the matter, while Rita went to New York with her latest beau, an actor called Ralph; Erin hadn't shown up because her grandmother had sent her to a Swiss spa for a week to calm her nerves; but Rita had come to stay in Erin's place because Ralph had broken up with her, when she'd already arranged to have her house painted during her planned trip away. When Sonny had told Jane about how his family was suffering for his mother's family's crap, she'd mentioned that he didn't even seem to be looking forward to his ringside seat at Erin's gut-wrenching break-up and he'd said, 'I know. It's like I've forgotten how to have fun.'
His mother's grievances against his aunt were not new to Sonny. He'd heard them endlessly rehearsed, and he knew from his aunt Amy that they went back to childhood. Attention and money had been lavished on Rita (and her daughter, Erin) that Helen (and her children) never got, without Rita ever putting in any effort of her own: she'd never held down a job and had married or otherwise paired up with one man after another, none of them worthwhile. Those were Helen's grievances. On the other side, Sonny gathered that Rita resented what she regarded as the chip on Helen's shoulder and as the compulsive over-achieving that made other people look bad. Rita thought that Helen would get more attention from her mother (and other family members) if she gave more attention. She'd seen it as an example when Helen had tried to suggest that, not being a specialist in divorce law, she might not be the best person to handle Erin's case. Sonny's knowledge of the legal profession told him that from an objective point of view his mother was exactly right: Erin would be better off with a lawyer who was more junior but had extensive specific relevant experience. Obviously his aunt Rita did not share that knowledge and could only react to Helen's reference to somebody 'junior' as her sister attempting to dodge family responsibility and palm her off.
The Morgendorffer house had become the venue for all this to be relentlessly ground down by the two sisters' metaphorical molars to a slurry from which all flavour had been drained. Quinn, desperate, had been trying to bond with Sonny, and to get him to join her in maintaining the family peace, and the situation also probably had something to do with her overreaction to the little Fashion Club 'drama'. At least that had provided Sonny with a brief if stupid distraction. In the meantime, his mother and his aunt had boxed the compass of their disagreements until Quinn relayed a telephone message from Erin about a previously undisclosed pre-nuptial agreement which guaranteed a fifty-fifty split. This complication had suggested once again to Sonny's mother that a more experienced lawyer should deal with the case, but Rita's reaction was the same as before and they were off round the circle again, making Quinn even more eager than before to have Sonny collaborate with her in the hope that he could solve this situation for her the way he'd solved the one with the Fashion Club. She'd even cancelled her dates to stay home with him, and the only thing that made that seem less dramatic than it should have was the way everybody else in the family was acting. Their father already bore the scars of the recurring conflict between his wife and her older sister. Even before the change of plan which brought Rita to their house, when it was only Erin who was expected to be physically present, he'd felt the need to mix up a whole pitcher of martinis as a precaution, and when his sister-in-law came through the door he'd started drinking directly from it. Now things had reached the point where he had literally fled his own house, not planning to be present again until Rita had left.
With his mother and his aunt on the brink of mutually assured destruction, his sister clearly having a nervous breakdown, and his father on the lam, Sonny did not have time to chat or hang out with Stacy, and Stacy didn't quite seem to grasp this. She'd make an attempt at contact, meekly abandon it—and then call up, or round, again and again. His family, Sonny had to deal with; Stacy, he didn't.
Strictly speaking, the situation between his mother and his aunt was not his to deal with. If he tried a manipulative maneuver, the odds were he'd find himself out of his depth. What he was going to do was the kind of dealing that his father and his sister weren't managing, just weathering the storm.
The storm winds were swirling yet again, as they would keep doing until Rita left. Mothering was the most prominent theme at the moment. Sonny's mother was still angry about his grandmother's approach, blatantly favoring Rita, lavishing money on her and Erin and leaving little or nothing for anybody else (the expenditure on Rita's first wedding had left Sonny's parents having to pay for their own wedding and barely able to afford a honeymoon). Rita made a great deal of her own maternal work raising Erin, and implicitly and explicitly contrasted herself with Helen, obsessing about work at the expense of her family. Sonny was by now so familiar with the twisted logic that he didn't need to eavesdrop on more than one word in five to know where the argument was up to: even without listening at all he could have recited the totality of the debate in his sleep. The only thing that was worrying him slightly was that if Rita's visit lasted much longer he might actually start doing that, literally, and even that wouldn't be a major problem because nobody else would pay attention.
Sonny and Quinn were in the living room, with the sounds of their mother and their aunt leaking in from the kitchen, when the phone rang. Quinn, sitting next to it, picked it up. She was thrilled when it turned out to be Erin, ringing to announce that the divorce was off. She couldn't wait to take the news to the two sisters in the kitchen, as if it would help the situation. Sonny knew better, but he also knew that this was a lesson Quinn could only learn from her own experience. He trailed behind her to hear her explain that Brian had flown to Switzerland and reconciled with Erin and that they were now having a second honeymoon. He was curious to see exactly how this would become more fuel for the fire. Theoretically it should be good news for everybody, but he knew that wouldn't be how things would play out. How would they play out?
Answer: his mother would jump past the bit about how she was now freed from responsibility for practicing divorce law to the immediate inference that any second honeymoon would be another contribution from her own mother's credit card to the only branch of the extended Barksdale family it ever helped out. And the two Barksdale sisters present were off again: round seventy-seven, or whatever it was.
The doorbell ringing at that moment, Sonny took responsibility for going to answer it, allowing Quinn to remain behind and continue her education. Again it was Stacy, still with nothing better to say than 'Hey, how's it going?'
Registering in his full consciousness only one word in five was still enough to tell Sonny how it was going. 'Oh, just fine', he said. If Stacy wanted to turn his attention to constructing his own full mental transcription, that was his business.
Behind Sonny, Quinn, more educated than she could bear (she never had liked being educated), came rushing out of the kitchen, through the living room, and then up the stairs, crying as she did so, 'Oh, when will it stop? When? WHEN?'
Sonny was just about to suggest to Stacy that they step away from the crossfire, when the subsection of his awareness still focused in the appropriate direction picked up that his aunt Rita had formulated a novel attack on her sister's parenting and defense of her own. What pinned his attention and fixed the words in his mind was the silence that followed them. His mother was never silent like that, certainly not in response to Rita. That was more like one of his own responses. Rita's not breaking the silence told him something about his mother's body language, and kept his attention held.
Then his mother did speak, in a voice he'd never heard her use before. It wasn't an angry voice (he'd heard all her angry voices before, with Rita, with his father, with himself and Quinn, with her work). It was a deadpan voice, a voice without intonation, inflection, or modulation of any kind, a voice without affect. It must be his mother, because it was his own voice.
Stacy picked up on that too. 'I never knew your mother could sound just like you', she said.
Looking at her, Sonny figured she too had picked up the words of that last exchange, but wasn't saying anything about them. Those words made Sonny think again of weathering the storm. Still looking at Stacy, he asked himself how you weather a storm, and answered himself that one way was to look for something that offered shelter.
'If I haven't permanently antagonized you by rebuffing your attempts to be supportive over the last week', he said, 'would you like to go for a walk?'
When Stacy just nodded, Sonny came out, shutting the door behind him. 'I've never told you about what used to go on between my mother and my aunt Rita', he said. 'And since you were just present at the moment when it changed from "what goes on" to "what used to go on", you might as well hear the story.'
At a leisurely pace, one stroll around the block was long enough for Sonny to tell Stacy the whole story of the Barksdale sisters, not just Rita and Helen but Amy as a bonus—even the parts he had heard about but not seen, like Rita and Helen getting maudlin drunk together after their fight at Erin's wedding reception, and saying how much they loved each other. All the repetition made the story easy to summarize. Stacy said, 'Wow. Growing up in a repressed household is so boring next to this stuff. We always have to pretend problems don't exist. Gets pretty inconvenient when there are odors involved.'
'Well, whatever a family's pattern, it's good to have support from outside it. If you've got sense enough to let yourself accept it.' Sonny scratched behind his ear. 'Human relationships, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Like Erin and Brian, perhaps. My non-existent-in-the-first-place optimism wasn't exactly nurtured by my twenty-four-year-old cousin's trip to the brink of divorce.'
'I can see how that might affect you.'
'I suppose if we do get married at least we...' Both become silent as the M word settled between them.
After a minute of silence, Stacy spoke up. "I, I know like, to protect my popularity, we said you were gay. But like, why does your aunt think that? She doesn't go to Lawndale."
It was the only reference that either of them made, even indirectly, to the words of the final exchange between Sonny's mother and his aunt.
What Rita had said was: 'At least I brought up a normal child, one who could get married.'
And Helen's response had been: 'Will you need any help packing, Rita, or can you manage that by yourself?'
"I don't know. My parents know the truth. Quinn knows the truth. Why didn't she tell my aunt?"
Sonny and Stacy were now back in front of the Morgendorffer house. They stopped walking and Stacy said, 'So, want to go see a movie?'
'I really should. I mean, I'd really like to. And I will if you can see your way to giving me a rain-check. But Aunt Rita's car's gone, and I ought to go inside and check on what's left of my family. Speaking of which, Dad left me in charge of the coded message to tell him whether it's safe to come back, and he might have called while I was out. Can I see you soon?'
'Sure.' Stacy put a hand on Sonny's shoulder and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Then he turned and started to walk away, looking back over his shoulder after a few steps to give a farewell wave. Sonny waved back and then turned himself to go into the house.
He found his mother and his sister in the kitchen, in the calm after the storm, cutting up a package of pre-prepared cookie dough into slices ready for baking.
'Hey, Sonny', Quinn said, 'Dad rang while you were out. He wanted to talk to you about some birds or whatever.'
'That was a code', Sonny said, and then, as his mother nodded knowingly, 'I don't know why he thought we needed to have a code.'
'Yeah', Quinn said, 'I just told him Aunt Rita was leaving.'
Their mother nodded again. 'And then I took the phone and told him what happened, and asked him to come home as soon as he can.'
Sonny watched silently for a minute or two as the cookie preparation continued. Then he said, 'I look forward to eating some of those cookies.'
'Not for me', Quinn said. 'But I tell you what. Gone With The Wind is on television tonight. It's got that Civil War you and Dad are always talking about, plus this really big fire. I thought we could all watch it together, with cookies for whoever wants cookies and celery sticks for whoever wants celery sticks. But you don't have to decide now.'
'I might just head up to my room for a little while, then.'
In his room, Sonny couldn't decide whether he wanted to talk or not to talk. He settled on email, and sat down at his computer to write to Luhrman, who was in his mind because of the memories of Erin's wedding.
Then he went back downstairs to have dinner with his family (his father having returned), and to watch Gone With The Wind. Quinn was in tears at how sad it was, and it made Sonny feel like crying as well. But the cookies tasted good. He thanked his mother and his sister for them, and went to bed feeling very strange.
He felt more nearly normal in the morning. When he logged on to the computer to see whether there was a reply from Luhrman, and thinking also of possibly dropping a quick line to Stacy and maybe even one to Jane while he was at it, he was surprised by an email from his Aunt Amy. It said that she would have called, but she couldn't be sure who'd answer the phone, and she particularly wanted to speak to him first, and could he call her?
When he did so, she explained that she'd been prompted by hearing from her mother, who'd passed on Rita's version of recent events. 'I know this is strange', she said, 'but I wanted to speak to you to pass on a message to Helen for me. My sisters have been fighting with each other all my life, and I think even before that, and now that's over there's something I want you to tell your mother from me.'
'Okay', Sonny said.
After he got off the phone, though, he decided he wanted to speak to his sister first and then to his mother afterwards. He found Quinn and told her about Amy's call.
'She said to tell Mom that no matter what happened she'd still always have one sister to fight with. And I was thinking about that, and about how I've been really strange around Stacy this week because of all the stuff that's been going on around here, and about how maybe you were having a similarly unanticipated reaction, wanting to spend time with me? So I thought before I tell Mom what Amy said, I'd just tell you that no matter what happens, you'll always have a brother to fight with.'
Some dialogue from 'Aunt Nauseam' by Jacquelyn Reingold
