Chapter 18
Allison left Dr. Capello in his bed and walked out into the hallway. Her talk with him tonight had been strange and revealing. She never would have guessed someone as sweet and funny and well-adjusted as Deacon seemingly came from such a violent background. Well, that explained the pepper spray. What explained Oliver? She wasn’t sure about Roland’s theory that Dr. Capello’s memory was failing. She’d challenged him to recite a poem from memory, and he’d done it without breaking a sweat. And yet reciting one little poem hardly proved anything, right? Seemed far more likely Roland remembered the timeline of events differently than Dr. Capello did. Did it matter? Allison felt safe staying at The Dragon. Dr. Capello devoted his life to helping children, not hurting them. And Deacon had given her pepper spray to protect herself. Thora had saved Allison that very day from a severe injury. And Roland had asked her to come back, which is the last thing someone with something to hide would do.
Nevertheless, she wondered...
She was about to go downstairs when she noticed that the attic door was ajar and someone had taped a note to the frame that read, Family meeting at 10:00 p.m. Attic! This means you, Al!
Family meeting? Why were they having a family meeting in the attic?
Allison carefully peeled the note off the door, closed the attic door behind her and headed up the stairs. When she reached the attic, she found everyone already present, including Brien the cat draped over Deacon’s shoulder, dozing like a furry baby. This was to be an informal meeting, Allison saw. Everyone was in their pajamas—Thora was in a short white nightgown with a chic oversize ivory cardigan wrapped around her, while Deacon and Roland were both in plaid lounge pants and T-shirts. They’d uncovered some chairs and the old metal camping cot. It seemed all was in place, but for her.
“Well?” Allison said to Deacon. “I’m here. What’s this about?”
“I call this meeting of the Capello brood to order,” Deacon said. Allison sat on a pillow on the floor and rested her back against Roland’s legs, the way she’d done as a kid on Friday night movie night in the sunroom.
“Someone tell me why we’re having a family meeting,” Roland said.
“Because I’m pretty sure we’ve all had a very hard week. And because it’s been twenty years since the four of us got to play together, and...as our Allison has been living in Kentucky for way too long, I thought we should give her a very special Oregon welcome. As opposed to an organ welcome, which is what my brother gave her last night.”
“God help me,” Roland said, his head falling back.
“An Oregon welcome?” Allison asked.
Deacon held out a wooden box and opened the lid. Allison leaned forward to look in, then narrowed her eyes at him.
“Deacon...is that what I think it is?” Allison asked.
Deacon waggled his eyebrows.
“You on the Left Coast now, baby girl.”
Allison stared at Deacon. Deacon stared at Allison.
“Please tell me one thing,” she said. “That’s not your dad’s medical marijuana you stole, is it?”
“That hurts, sis,” Deacon said. “Right here.” He tapped the right side of his chest where his heart wasn’t. “I’ll have you know this is my own stash.”
“So it’s illegal?”
“Nope. It’s legal here,” he said. “Ready to pack up and move yet?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Roland said. Deacon put Brien down and walked the attic, opening all the windows.
“Yes, she does,” Deacon said. “We’re bonding. Aren’t we, my twin?” Deacon chucked Thora under her chin.
“We’re voting?” Allison asked.
“Gotta be unanimous,” Deacon said. “Capello rules. What’s your vote, Thor?”
“We’re twins,” she said with a wink at Deacon. “I vote how you vote.”
“Well, we all know how I vote,” Deacon said. “Brien?” Deacon said, holding out the box. Brien lifted his head to sniff and Deacon shut the lid. “None for you, cat. You’re stoned enough as it is.”
“Why is Brien stoned?” Allison asked.
“Ragdoll cat.” Deacon put his box down and picked up Brien, then flipped him over, and the cat went limp as a noodle. “They have all the aggression bred out of them. They are, in other words, born stoned. Lucky bastards.” He flipped Brien back over and put him on the chair again. Much like someone stoned, he didn’t seem the least perturbed by what had just happened to him.
“I’m having what he’s having,” Thora said.
“Now you, brother...” Deacon said to Roland. “Yea or nay?” Roland started to protest and Deacon made a slashing gesture with his hand. “Shut it. Monks have been drunks since Jesus still walked the earth. Ever heard of anyone dying of a pot overdose? Ever heard of pot poisoning? Ever heard of a mean stoner? No, you have not. You’re not allowed to get holier than thou less than twenty-four hours after jumping Allison’s pretty little bones, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. Or skip the pipe because my rolling skills are second to none.”
“I’m in,” Roland said. “If it’ll shut you up.”
“No guarantees of that,” Deacon said.
“And,” Roland said, “we have to check on Dad every fifteen minutes.”
“Now you, little sister.” Deacon went onto his knees in front of her, his hands holding hers. “Would you do me the honors of riding with me and Mary Jane all the way to the top floor? Don’t be afraid. We’ll walk you through it. There’s a first time for—”
Allison took a joint from the box, picked up the lighter and lit up.
Deacon’s eyes widened. He blinked at her. He blinked at Roland.
“Marry her,” Deacon said.
Thus the family meeting commenced.
“I’m really not much of a smoker,” Allison said as she leaned back against Roland’s legs.
“You sure about that?” Deacon took the joint from her.
“Like a few times in college,” she said, feeling quite a bit less stressed out than she had in days. “I’m only doing it now because you’re making me.”
“Oh, yes,” Deacon said. “We forced it on you.”
“So rude,” Allison said.
“She gets a free pass,” Roland said. “She’s recovering from a breakup.”
“Ah, so this is medical marijuana for you, then,” Thora said, blowing out an elegant smoke ring.
“Does it cure a broken heart?” Allison asked.
“No,” Deacon said. “But that’s what he’s for.” He pointed at Roland.
“I’ll do my best,” Roland said.
“I’m so proud of you for getting laid.” Deacon wiped a fake tear from his eye. “It makes all my suffering worth it.”
“Your suffering?” Roland demanded. “How did you suffer?”
“You broke my heart when you joined that monastery,” Deacon said. “Speaking as one pretty man to another, you could have at least waited until you were old and ugly for that bullshit. A man is at peak pretty between twenty-four and twenty-nine. You wasted your pretty years. Now you’re vaguely ruggedly handsome. It’s a step down.”
“I’d still fuck him,” Allison said.
Deacon’s jaw dropped. “Listen to that mouth.” Deacon stared Allison down. “You kiss your brother with that mouth?”
“I do actually.”
Then Allison crawled up into Roland’s lap and kissed him. It wasn’t long before she realized she was truly relaxed and enjoying herself for the first time in days. She’d had fun with Roland last night but it certainly hadn’t been relaxing. The pot wasn’t very potent and it didn’t do much but make them all loose and giggly with the added benefit—no doubt Deacon’s intention—of making her feel like one of them again. And it was all going very well until Deacon opened his mouth again.
“So. Allison,” Deacon began, lifting his head off the floor, where he lay with Brien on his chest. Allison knew she was in trouble already. “A little bird told me that you had a special friend in Kentucky. Is that true?”
“What did you tell him?” Allison asked Roland.
“Nothing,” Roland said. “I swear.”
“He didn’t tell me anything,” Deacon said. “My wild Irish rose over there is the traitor.”
Allison glared at Thora. “Traitor.”
“I can’t help it,” Thora said, hiding her face in her cardigan. “He beat it out of me.”
“I said, ‘Thor, wonder if Allison had a boyfriend,’” Deacon said, “and then you spilled the beans.”
“You asked the question very pointedly,” Thora said.
“Beans everywhere,” Deacon said. “Girl can’t keep a secret to save her life.”
“Not true. Unfair. All lies,” Thora said.
Deacon hushed her with a snap of his fingers. “So, tell me,” Deacon said to Allison. “I want the whole story.”
“Fine,” Allison said. “I was the paid mistress of Cooper McQueen, heir to the McQueen family fortune. Maybe McQueen should have made me sign that NDA, after all, for how many times I’ve told the story since we broke up. Anyway, for sex years he paid me for six. I mean, for six years he paid me for sex. Then he broke up with me and now I’m here sleeping with Roland.”
“How was the sex?” Deacon asked.
“Top-notch,” Allison said.
“Who’s better? McQueen or my brother?”
“Your brother,” Allison said. “He didn’t have to pay me to sleep with him.”
“The mistress and the monk,” Deacon said, blowing smoke to the ceiling of the attic. “This is a buddy cop show waiting to happen.”
“I think he’s had enough,” Allison said. Roland apparently agreed and took the joint from his brother’s hand.
“Anybody else banging a billionaire around here?” Deacon asked.
“You should tell the story about when you made out with a guy,” Thora said.
“That’s a good story,” Deacon said.
“You made out with a guy?” Allison asked.
“I did,” Deacon said, grinning. “Went to this sake bar in Shanghai, met a super pretty guy from South Korea who looked weirdly exactly like Storm Shadow. He asked me about my work at the glass museum. I asked him what Snake Eyes looked like under the mask. Blah blah blah, fifteen minutes later we were making out in a back booth. Then we got kicked out, and I remembered I don’t have sex with strange men. Especially if they might be working for Cobra.”
“Okay, but when you say he looked exactly like Storm Shadow,” Roland said, “do you mean—”
“I mean he wore all white, had two crossed swords on his back and he was literally a ninja,” Deacon said. “I’m not sure if I’m bi or not but I’m definitely sure I’m a huge G.I. Joe fan.”
“Lots of overlap on that Venn diagram,” Thora said, making two circles with her fingers and bringing them together.
“Roland...” Deacon said, eyeing him meaningfully. “What about you?”
“Are you asking if I’m bi or if I’m a G.I. Joe fan?”
“I’m asking if, you know...during those long cold nights at the monastery, you found yourself someone to keep you warm in your lonely little cell.”
“You didn’t see the size of our beds at the monastery,” Roland said. “There was hardly room for one, much less two.”
“So what you’re saying is...you fucked the other monks on the floor?”
“Right,” Roland said, adorably deadpan.
“What about you?” Deacon said to Thora. “Any secret trysts you’ve never told me about?”
“You know all my secret trysts already,” she said.
“If I know them, then they’re not secrets,” Deacon said.
“But if I tell them to you, they’re not secrets, either,” she said.
“I never thought of that.” Deacon stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. He seemed to be having an epiphany. The entire time Allison watched this absurd exchange she was thinking, This is my family. This is my family. This is my family. And maybe it was the pot talking to her, but in that moment, she loved her family.
“This is just like The Breakfast Club,” Deacon said. “Right?”
“It’s almost midnight,” Allison said.
“This is just like The Very, Very Early Breakfast Club,” Deacon said. “Wait. We have to do the talent show, right? Talent show? They do a talent show in the movie. We should do the talent show?”
“What should we do, Deacon?” Allison asked him.
“I’m thinking a talent show.” Deacon snapped his fingers. “Roland, you start.”
“I have no talents,” Roland said.
Deacon shifted his eyes left to right rapidly. “That’s not what Allison said...”
“I said he had no talons.”
Roland held up his hands. “It’s true. I have no talons.”
This was the pot talking.
“I would watch a show called America’s Got Talons,” Deacon said. “Anyway, talent show now. Make up something. Impress us.”
Roland exhaled heavily and then stood up.
“Fine,” Roland said. “How much do you weigh?” he asked.
“That’s a personal question,” Allison said. Roland stared. “All right, one-twenty-mumble.”
“Did you say one-twenty-mumble?” Deacon asked.
“That is my exact weight,” Allison said.
“Thora?” Roland asked.
“One-forty-mumble.”
“Deac?”
“One-seventy-mumble.”
“Okay, then, you,” Roland said. “Up.”
“Me?” Deacon pointed at himself. “You want me?”
“I don’t want you. But I’m going to use you.” Roland laid down, stomach to floor.
“What is happening here?” Deacon asked.
“Sit on my back,” Roland said.
“This better not be a weird sex thing,” Deacon said.
“It’s not a weird sex thing,” Roland said. “It’s a totally normal sex thing.”
Deacon sat down on Roland’s midback, crossed his lanky legs and waited.
Then Roland put both hands flat on the floor and lifted himself in a perfectly formed push-up.
Thora and Allison applauded.
“This is it?” Deacon asked. “This is your big talent? You showing off you can do a push-up with a man sitting on your back? I could do that, please don’t make me prove it.”
“No,” Roland said. “This is the talent.”
Roland proceeded to do twenty push-ups with Deacon on his back, the final four of them on his knuckles.
“This is humiliating,” Deacon said. “I mean, impressive, but humiliating.”
“I’m enjoying the show,” Allison said. Roland wasn’t a show-off, so it was quite a sight to see him putting his strength on display.
“That’s it. I’m out,” Deacon said, clambering off his brother’s back after Roland hit twenty. “Show’s over.”
He collapsed back down into the big chair as Roland stood up and dusted off his hands.
“Thanks, little brother,” Roland said, smiling angelically. “Much obliged.”
“So am I,” Allison said as she reached for Roland’s arms. The push-ups had made the veins in his biceps bulge out, and she planned on running her hands over them for the next ten hours or until she was no longer stoned out of her gourd.
Roland sat down on the chair and dragged her into his lap. Allison went willingly and happily. It was nice to feel like a girlfriend, part of a couple that other people knew about. No secrets here.
“Someone else go,” Deacon said. “Thora, you do a thing.”
“I don’t have any talents, either,” she protested.
“Now we both know that’s a lie,” Deacon said, then proceeded to poke her repeatedly in the arm saying, “Go, go, go,” with every poke.
“Fine!” She stood up at last with a put-upon sigh. “Pot doesn’t interfere with inner ear stuff, does it?”
“I have no idea,” Deacon said. “But now you have to do what you were going to do.”
“I really don’t want to end up in the hospital.” Thora took her cardigan off and tossed it to Deacon.
“I have never had a better idea in my life,” Deacon said.
“Zip it,” she said. “If you make me laugh, I’ll fall over.” Thora stood in the middle of the floor on the checkered rug and took a steadying breath. Then she raised her arms in the air and bent backward in a bridge.
“Bravissima!” Deacon said.
“One problem,” Thora said from the floor. Her voice sounded strained and nasal. “I can’t get back up.”
Deacon hopped up and wrapped his arm under her lower back and lifted her back to a standing position. Once she was up, he spun her in his arms in a silly parody of a waltz. He spun her once more and led her back to the chair.
“Your turn,” Thora said to Deacon. “What’s your talent?”
“You’ve been smoking my talent for two hours. It’s Allison’s turn.”
“I don’t have any talents, either,” Allison said.
“Enough with the false modesty, people, and fucking do a thing,” Deacon said, fists in the air as if he were about to start a cartoon battle with them all.
“Fine. I can do a thing. I have some poems memorized. I don’t know if that counts as a talent, really, or a skill.”
“Recite!” Deacon said, and snapped his fingers.
With a sigh Allison rose and stood in the middle of the room on the rug, which had apparently become their stage.
“Let’s see...” she said. “I’ve got London by William Blake. ‘I wander thro’ each charter’d street, / Near where the charter’d Thames does flow...’”
“No, boring, stop,” Deacon said. “Better poem, please.”
“Um...” Allison tapped her foot on the carpet. “‘Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me...’”
“No death poems,” Deacon said. “Don’t you know any fun poems?”
“Fun poems?” Allison asked. “Well...maybe one fun poem.”
“Bring it,” Deacon said.
“A sonnet,” Allison began. “From the—”
“No Shakespeare,” Deacon said. “Don’t you dare say Shakespeare.”
“A sonnet,” Allison began again, one decimal louder to get Deacon to shut his trap, “from the Earl of Rochester. Otherwise known as the most notorious libertine in history.”
“Now,” Deacon said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ceiling, “we are getting somewhere.”
Allison cleared her throat. She raised her hand like a poet of yore. She recited the poem.
“I rise at eleven, I dine about two,
I get drunk before sev’n, and the next thing I do,
I send for my whore, when for fear of a clap,
I spend in her hand, and I spew in her lap;”
“I love poetry,” Deacon said with a sigh.
Allison continued.
“Then we quarrel and scold, ’till I fall fast asleep,
When the bitch, growing bold, to my pocket does creep;
Then slyly she leaves me, and, to revenge the affront,
At once she bereaves me of money and cunt.
If by chance then I wake, hotheaded and drunk,
What a coil do I make for the loss of my punk?
I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage,
And missing my whore, I bugger my page.
Then, crop-sick all morning, I rail at my men,
And in bed I lie yawning ’till eleven again.”
Roland, Thora and Deacon all applauded and Allison bowed.
“I knew I should have been an English major,” Deacon said.
“I didn’t learn that from my professors. I learned it from McQueen.”
“I knew I should have been a rich guy’s mistress,” Deacon said.
“Why do you have poems memorized?” Thora asked her.
If she had been stone-cold sober, Allison wouldn’t have answered the question. Or she would have answered it, but not truthfully. But that night in the attic with these strangers who were starting to feel like her family again, she was feeling safe enough to be honest.
“There was this girl, Katie, at the group home they sent me to after my mom died,” Allison said. “She told me what to do to get adopted. She had five rules. Rule number one—don’t cry. Nobody likes a crybaby. Rule number two—don’t complain. Nobody likes a whiner. Rule number three—smile. Rule number four—don’t ask for anything. Rule number five—learn a trick.”
“Like memorizing poems?” Thora asked.
She shrugged. “Eighteen years later and I still can’t break the habit,” Allison said.
“How many poems have you memorized?” Thora asked.
Allison didn’t want to answer. She did it, anyway.
“Hundreds,” Allison said. “Hundreds and hundreds.”
Roland stared at her before dragging her back into his arms.
“It’s okay,” she said, resting her head on his chest. She didn’t realize she’d started crying until he’d held her.
“That’s the saddest, sweetest, dumbest thing I’ve heard,” Thora said. “You were a kid, not a puppy.”
“It worked, though. I recited a poem to your dad the day he came to meet me.”
“You did?” Deacon asked. “Not that poem, I hope.”
“Lewis Carroll,” Allison said. Roland wiped the tears off her face with the corner of his T-shirt.
“That explains a lot,” Deacon said.
“What?” she asked him.
“Explains you.” Deacon pointed at her. “You when you came here, I mean. For months you didn’t break a single rule. Didn’t talk back. Didn’t fight. Didn’t raise your voice. You walked on eggshells. Dad was scared to death you’d act like that forever. He knew you thought if you broke a single rule...you’d be out the door. First time you got in trouble for...what was it?”
“Fight over the TV,” she said. “You wanted to watch The X-Files.”
“And you wanted to watch...what?” Deacon asked.
She coughed her answer. “Powerpuff Girls.”
“No wonder we fought,” Deacon said.
“You forgive me?” Allison asked him. Deacon reached out and pinched her nose.
“You can’t blame a kid for being a kid,” Deacon said. “Even if she is a dumb kid with terrible taste in TV shows.”
Allison grabbed Deacon by his nose and pinched it. “Your turn. Put on a show and stop making me cry. And rolling a decent joint does not count as a talent.”
She released his nose and he stood up. “I do have one talent,” Deacon said as he took his place at the center of the rug. “One very special talent. One very special Oregon-themed talent...”
“Allow me to apologize in advance,” Allison said, “for making Deacon do whatever it is he’s about to do.”
“Apologies accepted,” Deacon said. “And now...drumroll, please.”
No one gave him a drumroll.
Deacon lifted his shirt, stuck his stomach out and wiggled it as best as a guy who was five-ten and one-hundred-and-seventy-mumble pounds could.
Then he lowered his shirt and bowed.
“What the hell was that?” Allison demanded.
“The Truffle Shuffle!” he said.
“The what?”
“Oh, no, you didn’t just say ‘the what?’ to the Truffle Shuffle,” Deacon said with a sigh. “That’s it. I’m getting the Oreos. I’m getting the Pringles. I’m getting the grape soda. We are going stay up and watch The Goonies until dawn.” Then he picked up the roach he’d left in the ashtray.
Of course, that was precisely the moment when Dr. Capello appeared at the top of the stairs.
Deacon stood up straight immediately and put his hands behind his back. In unison, all four of them attempted to play it cool. Even Brien, who did a much better job than the rest of them.
“Dad,” Deacon said. “You’re...you’re awake.”
Dr. Capello stood in the doorway in his robe and pajamas.
“You okay, Dad. Daddy?” Thora said, her eyes too wide. Allison wanted to tell her to make her eyes normal, but she didn’t seem to get the telepathic message Allison tried to send her through a series of intense blinks.
“I heard something,” Dr. Capello said. “I smelled something.”
“We’re just, um, hanging out,” Deacon said.
“Hanging in,” Roland said. “Since we’re in. In the house, I mean.”
Allison pinched him. Nonstoned people did not say “hanging in.”
“Allison?” Dr. Capello said.
“Ah, yes?” she said, her voice hitting a high note it had never hit before.
“What are you all up to in here?” Dr. Capello asked her.
“Oh, you know,” Allison said. “We were doing a talent show.”
“What’s the talent?” Dr. Capello asked. “Who can stink up the house the fastest?”
“Dad,” Deacon said. “Sorry. We were just—”
“Grounded,” Dr. Capello said. “You.” He pointed at Deacon. “You.” He pointed at Thora. “You.” He pointed at Roland. “And you.” He pointed at Allison.
“I don’t even live here anymore,” Allison said.
“I’m thirty,” Roland said.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Dr. Capello said. “Grounded. All of you. No television. No movies. No dessert for a week.”
“A week?” Deacon said, horrified.
“You heard me. Now clean this mess up and go to bed.”
“Yes, Daddy,” Thora said. “Sorry, Daddy.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Deacon said, and Roland mumbled a “Yeah, sorry” of his own.
“Allison?” Dr. Capello prompted.
“Sorry, Dad,” Allison said. He nodded his stern acceptance of their apologies.
Dr. Capello turned to leave and as he left Allison caught a glimpse of something on his face. The tiniest little hint of a smile.
A soon as he was gone, they all looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“Kids!” came Dr. Capello’s voice through the door.
They went silent. Instantly.
Those approximately ten seconds after they stopped laughing and before they started laughing again—more quietly, of course—might have been the happiest ten seconds of Allison’s life. In those ten seconds, Dr. Capello was still the patriarch of the house. In those ten seconds, he wasn’t dying anymore. In those ten seconds, they were kids again. In those ten seconds, Allison feared nothing but getting grounded yet another week. And in those ten seconds, Allison felt completely and utterly and unconditionally loved and accepted and home. Her home. Her family. And she knew she was home, and she knew she was family, because at age twenty-five, her dad had grounded her for smoking weed in the house with her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend? No, but in that instant it felt like Roland was her boyfriend. Allison loved him. She loved him and Dr. Capello. She loved Thora and Deacon and even silly old Potatoes O’Brien sleeping soundly on the cot. Even the house Allison loved and the quiet tide and the friendly ocean and the kissing breeze and the comforting clouds and the bright and laughing stars hidden behind them. If one could marry a moment in time, she would have married that one. That moment when the stars were laughing with her and not at her. That moment when the sand in the hourglass was on her side and the house was once again her home.
She and Roland crept down the stairs to her bedroom and crawled under the covers and all over each other, and they didn’t part ways until dawn.