Steven
The enticing Lynette, having delivered the drink I requested, wiggled her ass away as I watched, distracting me from the large, ornately framed, square paintings I'd found hanging in the front hall beyond the staircase. After she disappeared around the corner, I sighed and returned my attention to the dark curiosities.
All four of the paintings, two on each side of the hall, were done in the same grayish, crude seeming, impressionist style and depicted the same scene in four different seasons. A crop, or a field of tall grass was the focal point, and the living face at the edge of the grass made it clear that the field possessed its own awareness. In the foreground with it was a tree with some rudimentary looking structures in the background, clouds in the sky and hills in the distance.
In the winter representation, the face appeared to sleep, its eyes closed and at a dark peace. During spring and autumn, the field seemed to sneer a bit, like it knew things as it watched people toiling about nearby. In summer, a long, grassy tongue reached from its overjoyed mouth, a struggling, hapless, female victim caught up by it. Although each seasonal image was subtly disturbing in its own unique, dark way, summer had an especially chilling quality.
Still, I looked from one to another, standing in the middle of the hall with a drink in one hand, the other resting casually in the hip pocket of my dress pants. The distorted scenes took on a nightmarish quality the longer I looked at them but, beyond that, they spoke to me. They held my attention as points of interest, something like the third place winner in the window of the small Saint John gallery I saw one evening, but different.
It was almost a lure, a challenging puzzle to be figured out and I was a bit startled to realize somebody else had approached. I jumped a little as I jerked my head to the right to find Gina Green standing about three feet away, also looking at the pictures, probably after wondering what I was staring at.
"Sorry," she said with a polite glance. "Didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay," I told her, looking at the summer picture with her.
After taking a good look at all of them, she offered, "Okay, these are weird."
"I've never seen anything like this," I admitted.
I noted how dressed down she was as opposed to the day before and what a sexy little thing she really was. Kitten had good taste in women, and that was for sure.
"Me neither. ... Why does it make me think Inuit?"
I looked at the artworks again and said, "Yeah, well they do sort of have that style, but the people in them aren't dressed like the Inuit."
"Plus, the landscape is wrong. Whatever. Listen, I'm sorry we were a bit slow to pitch in and help with the big kerfuffle yesterday. Me and sl- kitten were a bit stunned at the time."
"Yeah, don't worry about it. Like me and Mum were saying earlier this morning, we were all a bit stunned at the time. Sorry about Mum too, by the way."
"No prob. There's obviously some bad blood between them."
"Yeah, well my mother is sometimes a bit intense, so..."
"That's obvious too," she said with a well-meaning smile. "But, she's cool. Lots of energy."
I smiled a bit in return but, on the inside, it was one of those moments when the heavy truth of what my mother really was seemed to crush my senses anew.
"I can imagine what you're thinking of us," I said, finally turning away from the disturbing pictures to begin walking aimlessly down the wide hall.
"Why's that?" she asked, also tearing her eyes away to come up beside me.
"We're a pretty strange family," I said with a shrug. "I mean, my Aunt Ashleigh's eccentricities spell that out well enough. Then, you got the infamous and widely hated Sheila along with Mum who'd like nothing more than to kill her."
"And you?"
I took a sip as we started up the grand staircase and smiled wider, allowing a short pause to go by before I said, "I'd rather let my dysfunctions speak for themselves."
She seemed to appreciate that as she smiled wider and nodded, but asked, "And kitten?"
I allowed another pause and answered, "Aside from the fact she's the spitting image of her mother?"
"Point taken, but every family has their little quirks. You should have seen the family I grew up in."
"You seem pretty normal."
"Don't we all? Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I guess."
"It's kind of personal."
"Okay..."
"This... 'Burchell drive' that Ashleigh mentioned, and the thing with the staff... Are all Burchells...?"
"Horny as hell?"
"Well, yes."
We'd made our way to the top of the stairs and I could feel myself flush a little as I grinned uncomfortably, looking the other way as we continued walking.
"Sorry," she said to my hesitation.
"No, no, it's alright. I take it kitten is... driven?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Yes," I sighed. "Sheila has it, I have it, Mum has it and I'm willing to bet Ashleigh does."
"No offense, but that's probably the strangest thing about you Burchells, right there."
"No it isn't."
"Oh?"
"Not by a long shot."
She regarded me curiously, but didn't question me any further as we found ourselves entering the library, instead questioning me on something else.
"You're attracted to kitten, aren't you?"
"She's an attractive young woman."
"But...
you're
attracted
to
her," she assumed with this specific.
"She's my cousin, Gina. What are you getting at?"
"I'm just... If you knew kitten, you'd understand my concern. She may have this Burchell drive, but she's not like Sheila. She's not a whore and she has a good man and a stable life back home in Langley. I don't want to see that ruined."
"You're worried I'm going to fuck her."
"I... wouldn't have put it like that..."
"The last thing I intend on doing is fucking my cousin, no matter how attractive she is and no matter the Burchell drive. I might fuck the living daylights out of you, though. You're fair game."
These last two statements did three things. First, it entertained me. Second, I hoped it would put her mind very effectively at rest where me and kitten were concerned (I wished mine could be laid that easily to rest) and third, it produced a stunned expression from Gina.
"Uhh... Yeah, I have a man too, tiger."
I could only laugh, looking away but still pleased with myself. When I looked back, the stunned expression was still there, but there was also a slight grin as she shook her head.
"Now, can I ask
you
a personal question?"
"No guarantees on getting an answer after that last comment," she parried.
"Not that kind of question."
"Alright," she allowed.
"How are you with inconvenient truths?"
" ... I'm not sure what you mean."
"Well, I don't mean Al Gore. I mean... are you capable of accepting an unthinkable, or unimaginable truth and adjusting your outlook accordingly, or would you sooner run to the familiar, comfortable fool's paradise of denial?"
" ... Uhh... actually," she answered, looking at me strangely. "I'd like to think I'm pretty good with facing up and dealing, in fact, it's how I got this far in life. Why?"
I shrugged, moseying on over to the billiards table with my drink before answering, "I had this friend. We used to talk about that. She had some pretty interesting views on the subject."
"Oh?" Gina asked, that expression still on her face, but mixed with more curiosity now.
I rolled the cue ball to the opposite bank and caught it when it bounced back, saying, "She was a Pastor, so she had a more religious approach. She bowed to God as her ultimate, and sometimes, inconvenient truth."
"Sounds like she had it all sewed up."
"Yeah, Marci was cool," I said more to myself, my smile turning a bit sad as I bounced the cue ball off the opposite bank a little harder. "A very good friend who was victimized by an inconvenient truth she never would have expected because God didn't bother putting it in the bible. Luckily for her, she
could
run from it."
"What inconvenient truth was that?" she asked, intrigued but still looking at me funny as she walked to the end of the table.
"It's a long story, but let me put it to you like this:" I said, taking a drink from my glass before continuing. "It's like going to a beautiful ocean beach where sharks are prowling. There's no warning signs, so you have no idea about the sharks, but this is the ocean and, just because there's no warning signs doesn't mean there's no sharks. So you go in and, when you see those darting dorsal fins, you easily convince yourself that they're dolphins, cause if they were sharks, then somebody would've posted a warning sign near the canteen where you got your hotdog. So, after looking under the surface, you see things for what they are and you run out of the water, screaming, "Shark, shark!" As before, you still have the choice to go back into the water if you like, and there's always those naturalist types standing around who insist that sharks have no real interest in eating people. They assure you that the water's perfectly safe, so are you gonna stay on the sand and tan that saucy little body as you count your blessings... or take your chances and enjoy the water? As you can imagine, nobody volunteers for lifeguard duty at this beach, and nobody comes to save you when the naturalists come up wrong..."
"Uh huh. And where does your Pastor friend fit into this analogy?"
"Oh, she got a scare. Even lost a toe, but she made it out of the water in one piece and she... Well, she won't go near the water again."
" ... Alright. And your point with all this is...?"
"No real point, Gina," I sighed, rolling the cue ball to the corner pocket and in. "If there was, I suppose it'd be that there's no shame in staying out of the water."
"Hey, we're all responsible for our own decisions, right?"
I looked at her, my smile grim as I replied, "Another inconvenient truth."
There was a pause as she looked at me closely, that same expression still on her face. I closed my eyes in a long, tired blink as I casually directed my glance away and, when I looked up, Mum was just entering.
"Oh, hi, Gina. Hey, sweetie pie," she hailed.
