Bonnie paid the driver and climbed out of the taxi. Obviously pleased with his tip, the man hopped out of the vehicle to help get her bag from the trunk. As he drove off, she turned to look up at the unfriendly edifice that was the Rockwaller home.
The building, designed to be imposing rather than welcoming, stood atop a low rise. So we can look down on the neighbors literally as well as metaphorically. Three stories tall, it had been built to her father's personal specifications, from the snarling marble lions that flanked the driveway to the extravagant mahogany front doors, a matched pair that each stood ten feet high and five feet wide. The doors were opened only when her parents were hosting a party of some kind, in which case they were thrown wide, so that anyway coming up the hill would be treated to a long view of the opulent maroon and mahogany hallway within.
There would be no audience to ooh and ahh today, so Bonnie trudged around to the side entrance, where a pair of rental cars were parked beside the garage. She rang the bell - her parents always kept the door locked - and waited. Finally, the door opened.
"Oh look, the schoolmarm has joined us."
"Hi Connie." The brunette didn't react to her sister's comment. It was obviously intended as a taunt, but she wasn't ashamed of the work she did. And maybe, just maybe, a civil approach will lead to a civil response. "Merry Christmas. Is David here too?" David was Connie's husband. Her second, in fact.
Her middle sister's eyes narrowed, and Bonnie's heart sank. "I left him."
"Oh. I didn't know." Not that Connie will believe that. "I'm sorry it didn't work out." This was also true, though just as likely to be met with disbelief. Bonnie had only met David once, other than the wedding, but he'd seemed like a good man, who genuinely cared for Connie.
"I'm better off without him." Connie took a drink from the glass she was holding, then stepped forward so their faces were close together. Bonnie could smell the alcohol on her older sister's breath. She may have left her husband, but some things haven't changed. "And at least I can get a man."
Bonnie laughed, surprising herself. Normally comments about her apparently single status would unsettle her. Not because she really wanted a boyfriend, of course, but because one day they might ask why she didn't have one. I may not be ready to come out, but I am tired of being scared. "I have all the male attention in my life that I want, right now." She glanced back over her shoulder at the two rental cars. "Lonnie's here too, I take it?"
"Yeah." Connie made a face and drank again. "Don't expect to see much of her. She's in her room, talking to 'her people in Hollywood'."
Which just went to show that while Connie might have been an academic prodigy, Lonnie was cleverer about some things. Work came before family in the Rockwaller house. Their eldest daughter's career might so far have been limited - with one exception that Bonnie was sure her parents didn't know about - to TV pilots that never got picked up and micro-budget movies that nobody saw, but acting was at least potentially glamorous and lucrative. Bonnie's teaching job was neither of these things.
"Why don't you go up to your room for a while?" Bonnie suggested. "I'm sure mom and dad are going to give me the welcome home interrogation, so you can have some time to yourself."
For a second, Connie looked tempted. Then her face hardened into suspicion. "So you can play the only dutiful daughter? I don't think so."
Bonnie shrugged. She'd tried.
"Bonnie!" Her mother greeted her with the glassy smile she'd come to know too well over the past twenty-four years. Like Connie, Yvonne Rockwaller held a glass in her hand. Probably a martini, in her case. Half-empty. I wonder how many times she's filled it, today? "Oh honey it's good to see you!"
The brunette endured her mother's overly-enthusiastic hug, feeling first gratitude that no-one outside the family had ever guessed the reason for her mother's excessive ebullience and emotionality, and then guilt over that gratitude.
"Bonita." Her father's greeting, on the other hand, showed no emotion at all. He did not rise from his chair. "I trust your flight was pleasant."
"It was, father. Thank you for buying the tickets." She resisted a sudden, wild urge to bob a curtsey, like some supplicant brought before the king. Her father would not be amused by such flippancy; assuming he recognized that it was flippant.
"You really should get a job closer to home, Bonnie." Her mother fluttered, her drink momentarily forgotten. "Then we could see you more often."
Bonnie shrugged. "I'd need a lot more experience and credentials to secure a job at the Upperton Conservatory." She noted truthfully. "But maybe the community college -"
"Oh!" Yvonne Rockwaller blanched at the idea of her daughter teaching in such an establishment, as Bonnie had known she would. The youngest Rockwaller decided to let her mother off the hook.
"UAH is a good school, mom. I'm happy there."
Connie offered an insincere smile. "Bonnie tells me she's getting all the male attention she can handle down in Alabama. Maybe that's why she's so keen to stay there."
Damn it. There wasn't anything you could say in this family that wouldn't come back to bite you. "I said I have all the attention I want. That's not the same thing."
"Oh! Have you met someone?" Their mother seized on the idea. Despite Connie's second divorce being on the horizon, and the coldness of her own marriage, Yvonne Rockwaller somehow maintained a romantic streak. Maybe it's how she copes. A glance at the glass in her mother's hand reminded Bonnie of another coping mechanism.
"There was someone I was interested in for a while, but ... another woman got there first." Bonnie neglected to mention the gender of the person she'd been interested in.
"Missed out again, sister dear?" Connie smirked as she poured herself another drink.
"I guess so." Bonnie swallowed her angry retort, and her pride. I won't stoop to her level. The thought didn't make her feel much better. Maybe she could try changing the subject. "So what are the plans for tonight and tomorrow?"
"Your mother and I are attending the Mayor's Christmas function this evening." Her father answered. "You girls will have the house to yourselves for a few hours." If he saw any irony in demanding that his daughters return home for the holiday, only to leave them, he did not show it. "When we get back, we will of course all attend Midnight Mass."
"Of course." Not that they'd attended the previous year, but clearly her father's love-hate relationship with the Catholic church was in one of its 'love' phases. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
"In the morning we'll open the presents." Her mother gave Bonnie one of her brightest, most brittle smiles. "Then have a lovely family lunch. Cook's prepared everything, and left instructions. We just have to put it in the oven and it will be perfect."
Her father snorted. "I don't see why the woman couldn't come in and cook it herself."
"It's Christmas Day, Donnie." Yvonne protested mildly.
"It's her job."
"I'll handle the cooking." Bonnie volunteered. She didn't trust her mother to do it, even if she were sober, and neither Connie nor Lonnie had ever been interested in anything that smacked of domesticity. And if it means I'll be left alone in the kitchen for a few hours, that won't hurt either.
"I can't believe you didn't tell Cook about my dietary requirements." Lonnie complained about the meal as soon as Bonnie finished putting it on the table the next day. She pointed accusingly. "An actor simply can't afford so many carbs in her diet."
"That's a baked ham, Lonnie." Connie rolled her eyes. "It's full of protein, not carbs."
"Oh, well I'm sure the famous scientist knows best." The eldest Rockwaller daughter gave a tight, malicious smile. "How is your research going, sister dearest?"
The middle sibling stabbed a knife into her bread roll with sudden anger. "I ... decided to seek new opportunities elsewhere."
Lonnie nodded. "Like you periodically decide to seek new husbands?" Her tone was light and bantering, but her smile was cruel.
"And who are you dating, Lonnie?" Connie's eyes glinted a warning. "One of the 'Oh Boyz', isn't it? Remind me which one. From a certain angle they all look alike."
The blonde's smirk slipped slightly at the question. Bonnie, who had been doing her best to ignore the sniping, fumbled the plates she was carrying and only stopped them from falling with a desperate grab. I hope our parents don't ask about that comment. The noise drew her sisters' attention.
"At least I have a boyfriend." Her eldest sister's smile was firmly back in place. "I hear poor Bon-Bon is still all alone."
"Apparently there was a guy she wanted, but she let someone else steal him from her." By unspoken accord, Connie joined the attack. It had always been like this. When the barbs between her older siblings grew too pointed, they'd both turn on her instead.
"I don't know why you broke up with that nice British boy." Her mother joined the critique, though in her case it was prompted by mere cluelessness, not malice.
"Yes." Her father took a rare interest in the conversation, and pointed at her with his fork. "Andrew, wasn't it? He would have been a fine match. Whatever happened to him?"
"He got engaged recently." Bonnie hoped that would put an end to the topic. She wasn't that lucky.
"Another one who wriggled off your hook, Bon-bon?" Connie chortled, then downed a gulp of her Bloody Mary. "Who's the lucky girl?"
"It's not anyone you'd know."
"Surely you can give us a name, at least?" Lonnie raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Even you would did think to ask that, right?"
The youngest Rockwaller very nearly made something up, but she was fed up with the attitude from her sisters, and tired of the conversation.
"Eric." That ought to shut them up.
"Erica?" Apparently her father was being obtuse.
Bonnie sighed. She probably ought to just say yes, and hope the subject was dropped, but she couldn't. "Eric. Andy's gay."
"You turned your boyfriend into a faggot?" Lonnie was all class. Connie gave a bray of laughter.
"He was gay before I met him." Bonnie did her best to rein in her anger. "I was his beard." Which she had been, though for some time she hadn't realized that fact.
"You knew he was a homosexual?" Their father seemed to finally have come to grips with what she was saying.
Not initially. But she didn't feel like going into long explanations. Particularly ones that made her look clueless. "Yes."
"And you continued to associate with him?" Her father did not wait for the self-evident answer. Instead, he did what he always did: barked orders. "You are not to have any further contact with that ... person."
Bonnie was willing to sacrifice her own pride to avoid a fight with her family. But I will not betray my friends. "I've already agreed to attend the wedding."
Her father simply stared at her, eyes hard. Clearly he had little interest in whatever promises she had made.
I will not back down on this. "Andy is my friend. I will be there when he gets married." The former cheerleader kept her voice level, but firm. Still, it couldn't hurt to try a little conciliation. "I'm sorry if that upsets you."
"Upsets me? It disgusts me." Donato Rockwaller growled. The skin of his neck was turning a dusky red; a sure sign he was angry. "I never expected one of my own children to associate with someone like that."
"Someone like what, exactly?" Bonnie heard the edge in her voice, but she wouldn't stand by and hear her friends denigrated.
"A deviant."
"Being gay does not make you a deviant." Bonnie just barely kept the response from being a snarl, her temper rising as fast as the flush in her father's neck.
"It is a sin against God." Her father folded his arms, the way he always did when he was making one of his 'my way or the highway' pronouncements. "That boy and all of his kind - gays, lesbians, all those perverts - will burn in Hell for his depravity."
"Then I guess it's a good thing I like the heat."
Author's Note: Oh my.