{ Commentary: Ophelia's Flowers, Part 1 }

[delga]

ophelia's flowers.
original fiction; of love
This is the story about how my sister fell in love with a man old enough to be her father.

 

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray
love, remember: and there is pansies. That's for thoughts."
Hamlet, Ophelia, Act 4, Scene 5
Remembering and thinking about the things remembered. See? Appropriate.

 
 
 

OPHELIA’S FLOWERS
I warn you now: most of this wrote itself and I’m fiercely over-protective of some of the characters. I talk about them like real people. It’s quite scary how this one ate my brain for ten days and then spat it out.

 

Kayley Steiner

There are so many ways this story could go and to hear her tell it, you’d think she was some sort of damsel in distress and he some sort of knight in shining armour. Except it wasn’t that easy, even if it was almost true. Jesus, I’m not making any sense, am I?
Starting was so easy once I realised that I didn’t have to be all technical and prosaic about this. It could just be a story that people were telling, like gossip. I always start fic in the middle and it’s always a bad move, and I had a couple of false starts myself so I figure, why can’t Kayley? Now Kayley is really important to me in terms of the storytelling because she is supposed to be her sister’s mirror and she just isn’t, and in terms of sisterly conflict, that’s a big one for her, even though she never expressly says so. She is younger and she’s the normal one, she’s average. What she never really realises and what this way of telling the story never lets the audience know is that Kate loves her twin sister enough that she would – quite literally – die for her. But you can’t get that from this narrative and that’s the shame of it. Oh wow, this is going to be long, isn’t it?

I was talking to Sofia about how I should start and she said, well, you know, start at the beginning. But I don’t even know when that is, let alone know how to describe it. I’m not the storyteller in the family, okay? That was my sister’s thing. Everything was my sister’s thing. Everything came easy to her, you know? There’s me, working hours every night just to catch up and she’s already done her homework and whatever. But she was a geek back then and she wasn’t when she met Jet, so I guess that makes something of a difference. Okay, yeah. Can I start again? I need to start again.

There’s me and then there’s my sister; we’re twins, right? And then there’s Sofia, who’s mum’s friend’s daughter. And then there’s Jet who used to work with Mum and Mum’s friend, right? And between my sister and Jet there’s about forty years of history. No, I’m so not kidding. My sister was this little Lolita kid, except she just didn’t care. Not that I know if Lolita cared all that much either, but that’s somewhat against the point. Now, the problem about starting at the beginning is that no-one really knows if the beginning is with Jet or with Kate or with Mum’s friend. I guess that’s as good a place as any to begin, though, considering she’s the reason most of this happened. What’s this? This is the story about how my sister fell in love with a man old enough to be her father.
Whilst I hate this exposition that I’ve done (it’s clumsy and ugly), I really like this part, the way Kayley runs through all these details. When I read it back, it sounds like she’s deliberately saying it in a monotone fashion (so, it’s more, there’s me and my sister, and like, we’re twins, and there’s Sofia, blah blah blah). I hope it comes across that way because Kayley’s essentially running through all the little details that you need to get out of the way to get to the story. The story really begins in the next paragraph, with Rocha Naomi whom I love so much, it’s almost impossible to convey.

Rocha Naomi was this typical army brat – her dad was in the Navy and her mum was a housewife with, like, twenty kids. Well, no, that’s a lie. There were eight kids and Rocha was the third one. Before you ask, yeah, her name’s back-to-front. Her dad’s idea, apparently, because Rocha was born in Japan and her parents were getting over a rough patch. She was supposed to be the thing that brought the family back together but that was obviously only a short-term thing because they divorced and remarried twice after that. They’re completely divorced now, for real this time, but that’s more because Rocha’s mum’s a complete witch. What? It’s true.

Anyway, so Rocha’s name is back-to-front and she’s this rebel kid who, like, deliberately fails her GCSEs or O Levels or whatever they were called back then and everyone’s like, well, it’s a bitch to fail these things, you know, so she must really be super smart. Except Rocha never gave a damn about school and she ended up joining the air force and becoming the first of her era to like, overcome penis-envy or something. Don’t get me wrong, Rocha is as woman as woman can be but to hear her Wing go on, it’s like she’s got real balls, you know? What the hell am I talking about? Do I sound nervous? I feel nervous. I’m telling this all wrong. God, I need a drink.
Rocha’s story is something I would write and explain in so much more detail if I ever had the chance but I fear that this story has to be it for all these characters (which is a damn shame because I have an obsession with Kate and Jet. And Rocha). You can normally tell if there’s a character I like by one of two things – do they have an odd behavioural quirk as a result of their childhood? (Tyler in the NY Sheldon story has Latin as his first language); is there something about them that is different, or striking? Rocha Naomi’s name is back to front. For those that care, all of Rocha’s siblings have biblical names beginning with J: Joanna, Jack, Joel, Josiah, Jonah, Joseph and Judith; Rocha was the third child and her parents’ first divorce came between her and Joel; the second was between Jonah and Joseph and their final one when Rocha’s mother was expecting Judith. I just wanted people to know that.

Right, Rocha. Rocha joins the air force and she’s in the middle of some epic air strike or something and she has a nervous breakdown. She leaves the RAF on medical discharge and ends up working with the Met police in the city, and this is where things get a bit messed up, for Rocha and my sister, even though it’s years before we’re even born. Rocha’s completely obsessive-compulsive and whilst in real life that means she liked all her pencils being the same height and stuff, in her life it just meant she’s brilliant at her job and before long she gets promoted and she’s swapping desk jobs for street work. Let’s say three years go by – Rocha’s jumping up the ladder with the Met and she ends up working for Jeremiah Watson, more commonly known to the world at large as Jet. Jet from the Met. Jesus. Why Jet and not Jed? Who even knows? It’s some pretentious bill thing, like a boys’ club name. I do not know. Whatever it is, Jet and Rocha are pretty much a perfect team. Jet has all these antiquated rules about how to proceed with criminal investigations and he’s a grumpy old sod without a sense of humour. Rocha’s stern and still bitter about being kicked out of the one job she always loved having – that’s the air force for those of you trying to keep up – not to mention totally and completely anal, so rules and regulations? Completely Rocha’s thing. So you’ve got Jet and you’ve got Rocha, all London’s idiot criminals and after all of that you have Rocha’s surprise fiancé, Bobby Gorsch who she met on leave this one time when the Wing was in the middle east some place, but seriously, when was the Wing not in the middle east because weren’t there like three wars there or something? I don’t know; I’m not a student in the traditional sense. They don’t really teach dancers things like geography, just in-step and listening to your heart beat. My sister could tell you, you know. But we’re not there yet.

Bobby gets transferred to a plot just south of Damascus and one of the guys he gets tagged with is David Steiner. Steiner’s pretty much the same as Bobby: he’s getting his ass kicked for being married to a woman who’s twenty times the pilot he is. Now, all she wants is to have loads of babies, and the only reason she joined the RAF in the first place was to pay her way through four years of a Sociology degree at Manchester. But she’s schlepping through the desert like the good “bluebird” she is and she’s in charge of getting her unit back to wherever it is they need to get to before a helicopter can dive in and do the hero act and suddenly the lot of them get jumped by the bad guys. (For serious, I think it’s Iraq. Gulf War was early nineties, right?) They stick it out and get the hell out of dodge, completely alive and it’s not like she believes in God but Steiner does and he’s looking at her and dammit if she doesn’t choose that moment to have an epiphany. A “fucking lupus” as Mum puts it. Yeah, this is now the story of how my totally not meant-for-each-other parents decided that they totally were. My mum figured she was destined to marry my dad and thus began their ridiculous marriage. For the record, I think things would have worked out if Mum wasn’t depressed out of her mind but that’s another story altogether. Anyway, she’s graduated and finished her tour and she’s doing social work now, waiting for her husband to come back off his tour and get promoted high enough so that he doesn’t have to be gallivanting off around the globe. He decides that Bobby should meet the missus and that’s how my mum meets Rocha. Mum and Rocha? Not all that different except for the fact that Rocha loved the RAF and Mum hated it. But they were both good at what they did and they both made excellent RAF wives. I know Mum resented going from being the boss to being just the wife but hey, what can you do, right? She chose what she wanted, after all.
Gah, I never wrote this properly. I was supposed to set up Maria’s discontent really early in the story but I never quite got it right. Maria’s story is about loss and that loss happens when she leaves the RAF (because that’s when he relationship with her husband breaks down; he falls in love with the woman she didn’t want to be, the military bluebird).

Where am I? I don’t even remember why I’m telling you all of this. It’s important though, because you have to know the dynamics here. You’ve got four people who are all each others’ best friends; two couples, one that’s working right and one that really isn’t; and you’ve got two women who become like family. You see, when Bobby and Dad finally come off tour, Bobby ends up stationed in the Far East. This is back when they still had people stationed round near Vietnam, trying to keep an eye on what was going on in Korea without messing up relations with China and the like. Well, that’s what my sister used to say whenever it used to come up in conversation. Which it did, a lot because my sister and Sofia never really got along as well as Sofia and me, and for some reason it all came back to the fact that Sofia was born out there. What I’m saying is Rocha left the city to be with her husband. Okay, when I said she was like a man, I didn’t mean that. And she’s not really all that cold either; Rocha’s a complete love. She doesn’t take bullshit. I guess having Bobby made life worthwhile for her. I mean, she’s not even all that OCD anymore. These days? She only washes her dishes twice when she’s done with them. Trust me, it’s an improvement.
Random: I don’t know if I ever explain Rocha’s OCD all that properly. This is a woman who cleans her apartment top to bottom every day.

Oh, by the way, we’ve been born now. Yeah. We were three when Rocha left for Singapore and Mum was expecting Simon. That’s my little brother. He’s totally awesome. Dad reckons Simon is a complete girl but that’s not true, either, because he’s just not macho like Dad, he’s more mellow. Something else I forgot that’s pretty important: Jet. How can I phrase this without coming across completely five years old? Jet had a bit of a thing for Rocha. I mean, when they met, they apparently were very much of the “each to their own” philosophy but it turns out that Jet really ended up worrying about Rocha. Something people should know about her is that she’s gorgeous. I mean she’s classically gorgeous. Long legs, dark hair, huge, huge eyes and this face that stops people. Mum is pretty in this plain, sullen way but Rocha is Hollywood in comparison. Thing is with pretty girls who also happen to be well-intentioned if not occasionally colossally pissed off? Moment something happens to them, everyone is worried and Rocha was never someone who cried in front of people. And by people I mean men, really. Rocha was hardcore. But on top of everything else, she was also an obsessive compulsive who had the world’s biggest mental blow out on her last case. For various reasons, Rocha has had issues with imprisonment since she was really young. If I had the time I’d tell you Rocha’s story inside out I would because it’d make an awesome movie but maybe Diego will tell you whatever titbits he was scooping off Sofia when they were together. Long story very short, Rocha has one of her nervous fits, bursts into tears and the ever chivalric, if not somewhat misogynistic, Jet Watson has a little lupus of his own and realises he’s a whole sum of nothing without Rocha to make him bend to the curves. But Rocha leaves and Jet doesn’t, and now you’ve got a grumpy guy who’s been ditched and has years to mull over everything that’s ever gone wrong in his life.
You know what I just realised? I never went into Diego and Sofia’s relationship. Something else for me to note on the re-write. As for Rocha and Jet – I really hate how I wrote this part. The idea was that even stoics have a breaking point and after this case (Tina talks about it later), that’s it for Rocha. She just quits. I need to learn how to write, though, obviously.

This quick-stop tour of Rocha’s life gets us to nowhere, really. Simon is born, Mum and Dad argue a lot, me and my sister grow up. In Singapore, Rocha and Bobby start to have a family – Sofia is born, then Alicia but she dies of pneumonia when Rocha’s expecting Joachim; the youngest of the Gorsch troupe is little Bernardo who’s the sweetest thing ever. By the time he’s six months old, Rocha is back in England and both Bobby and Dad have been redeployed. We lived with them for the next ten years – two women, six kids and no fathers. Mum and Rocha used to work half-shifts with the CID. Now and then they’d come across Jet, but not too much. Rocha was losing her nut over Bobby, Mum was stressed out because she wasn’t getting the funds she was expecting from the RAF and in the middle of this we had The Crisis.

You know, I wish Kate was here to help me tell this. But I haven’t seen her in five years now. When we were little, I always had a hard time trying to go to sleep and Kate and me would huddle under the covers and she’d tell me stories about ordinary people and ordinary places. But the thing is they were the best stories I ever heard, just because Kate knew how to tell a good yarn. If she was here, she’d start from the beginning and she’d know where it was, too. She’d tell you all the important bits and miss out all the junk and you’d know where you were going with Kate. Not with me, though. But Kate’s story is important and now I owe it to her to get it told.

I don’t want to talk about The Crisis just yet; this isn’t about building suspense or anything clever like that, I just don’t like talking about it. That’s when Mum started to get really ill and it was just stressful. Kate and me, we’d just turned seven, and we were still stuck in this flat with Rocha and the Gorschs and it was just stressful. But you should know about my sister first. We’re twins, I told you that already. Identical twins except for the fact that Kate managed to get all the family assets and I got all the leftovers. Kate was good at whatever she turned her hand to. She was so smart and so pretty. She was always really clean, super polite and she had this way of pleasing people, you know? Like she could do no wrong. Me? I was catastrophe Kayley. I got into fights, failed spelling tests and put people into bad moods. Dad always said it was old-fashioned Steiner charm; Kate said it was just yin and yang. Sofia used to say I was just cantankerous (she always did like long words) but I think when Kate and I were in the womb, we just got split up unequal like. The one thing Kate never could do, regardless of how much adults doted on her, was make friends. Oh, she’d try but she came off a bit cold. I mean, she was so smart and the other kids we knew didn’t like it all that much, you know? I suppose it was intimidating to be around someone that perfect. I always wondered if Mum felt that way around Rocha but that question was always superseded by whether or not Rocha was our mother and not Mum because I swear to you, to look at them? Kate was Rocha’s daughter. That’s how it looked to people and the number of times they’d make that mistake was embarrassing.
A few people thought that Kate and Kayley would turn out to be Rocha’s daughters; my implication with this is not so much that they looked alike but that their mannerisms made them seem alike. Also, subtext: Rocha was more of a mother to the girls than Maria ever was. I tried to explain that in Rocha’s section without being too explicit but fucked that up.

Kate had this habit of looking you in the eye when you were speaking. She always wore her hair long and loose, and it was fine and wispy so she always looked so dainty. Mum had my hair cut short when I got glue stuck in it and it’s been that way ever since. It was one way of telling the two of us apart. It was also a pretty wholesome sign of my outrageous bad luck. But anyway, there was my sister and then there was me, and then there was Sofia who was the apple of her parents’ eyes and our friend. I know I talk her down but she was three years younger than me and girls, we never really forgot that about her. She was Simon’s age but even he seemed older than her, always. We just gave up on Fia, I suppose, which is a shame because I wouldn’t be here talking about this if it wasn’t for her. We all grew up, in the end, and everything that happened that year stopped being something that made us hate each other and became something that made us like sisters. I think we agreed that Diego and Zach could deal with Kate when we hit eighteen but there’s a lot to go before that and it’s not important but it’s a part of what made my sister the way she was. But I should get back to The Crisis.

The thing about life back then was how it was all pretty antagonistic with Mum and Rocha standing in clear of the storm, just trying to keep it together. The first thing to happen that year was Dad and Bobby being reenlisted and Rocha coming to live with us in our flat. Well, I say our flat; it was actually the flat next door. Bobby and Dad decided to buy out two adjoining apartments on the twelfth floor of our block and they added doors between the two flats so that it was just one big house. The second thing that happened was Mum’s RAF pension stopped coming through. It’s not like she was getting full payment anyway because she left as early as was humanly possible, but then they found something in the paperwork that rendered the payments null or something, and it offered her a chance to go back to the RAF and get an extended pay or something. See, I still have no clue what that was all about but Mum always said that the RAF never wanted her to leave. Her joining up had been an accident, she said, and her leaving was the most deliberate choice she had ever made and now they were trying to extort her into going back to work. I don’t know how much of that rings true. I do know that Mum started to get seriously depressed around this time, not to mention a little bit cuckoo upstairs. I don’t blame her, you know. It was a hard time.
I have no idea as to the technical accuracy of the above. I think that mostly it’s BS.

The biggest problem, though, came in the summer when Mum and Rocha heard that Dad and Bobby had gone AWOL. Mum wanted to know how people in airplanes went AWOL on the ground; Rocha wanted to know if they were actually AWOL or if the RAF wasn’t risking searching hot zones because of proximity to enemy fire. Neither of them got an answer but I guess the silence was answer enough because they started to get in contact with the other wives. It was a peculiar thing because generally, when there’s no news, military wives contact the CO’s missus; den mother is like ground zero for contact and information and military wives are a breed unto themselves. Except Mum and Rocha were nothing like the other military wives: Mum and Rocha were of the “been there, done that” variety and they liked to stay away from the “screaming hysterics” as Rocha so sweetly put it. It was August time when Erica Miller turned up at the flat with her two boys and I guess if ever I was going to get there this would be the beginning.

Erica Miller was a tart dressed up as a housewife. She was awful and her sons were too. She waltzed into our lives as though she was better than us, sneering at the way we were living and the way Mum and Rocha actually worked for a living instead of living out of “Daddy’s” pocket, the way she so clearly did. Darren and Luke were left with us whilst she talked to Mum and Rocha about The Crisis. Now, we had no clue what the hell was going on; Kate and Sofia had cottoned on that something was wrong and I knew that there was trouble about, even if I wasn’t as aware as the other two. Darren was a brat who liked to stir trouble and wasn’t all that pleased about being put in a girl’s care: Mum had left Kate in charge. We played in the second living room; that’s to say, the living room in Rocha’s half of the flat and about half an hour after Erica turned up, there was another knock at the door. Mum was making coffee, I think, and Rocha was on the phone to the den mother, so Kate got up to open the door.

Jet was about thirty years old when we first met him. We’d heard of him before then, of course, but we’d never actually met him. Kate opened the door and let him in; he smiled at us kindly and then Kate took him through to our kitchen before coming back to play with us. Darren was upsetting the Joachim and Fia and I were trying to amuse Luke and Bernardo, with little success. “You know they’re dead, don’t you?” Darren said and my sister nearly hit him then and there; instead she sneered at him and sat down to tell Simon one of her stories. We all ended up listening in the end. I wish I could remember what story it was. I’ll have to ask Simon. It was his favourite.

When the story was done with, Fia and I were trying to think up a game to play with the boys and Darren was even more determined to be the centre of attention. “You know I’m telling the truth. They’re dead. Our dads are dead.” Kate ignored him, tried to help Joachim with the puzzle he was fixing together. “I bet they were tortured, beaten up and everything. I bet they died hurting.” If I think about it now, Darren Miller was just a scared little boy hoping that someone would tell him he was wrong but Kate had other things to think about, like whether or not he was right and whether or not it was a good thing that he was scaring the hell out of the rest of us.

“You’d better go sit over there,” she told him, pointing to the corner of the room.

“You go sit over there!” he yelled, shoving her, hard. I remember Kate stumbled a little, but then she straightened up and repeated her instructions again.

“Go sit in the corner, Darren. You’re scaring everyone.”

“I said, you go sit in the corner!” Poor kid. He was so angry. He was about to lunge forward and push Kate again when someone stopped him – only my sister’s knight in shining armour. Only Jet Watson.
Oh, I fucked this up so badly. Here’s how this is supposed to run – instead of cutting away from Jet and Kate, you were supposed to stay with them, watch him kneel down and talk to her. Which…I do later in the paragraph. But still.

I think Jet would have helped Darren out but Erica stormed through the room less than a second later and pretty much snatched him from Jet’s grip. Then she grabbed Luke, too, and stormed off. Jet and Kate just watched them leave, both of them a little surprised, before Jet turned back to my sister and asked if she was okay, and Kate just nodded silently. I remember I could hear Mum and Rocha rattling around in the kitchen so I guess they were making dinner; Jet must have been invited to stay because he crouched down to talk to Kate face-to-face. I don’t know what he said to her, even now. Kate and I stopped talking about two years before she walked out. All I know is that she made Jet promise not to bullshit her ever. I remember even then that he seemed impressed by her. But then, who wouldn’t be? Kate was Mum’s daughter, balls of steel and all of that. She stood her ground and she always took what she wanted. She got that from Rocha. See where this is going yet? Anyway, Dad and Bobby made it home in one piece and life went on. But I don’t think Katie ever forgot Jet, and I know he definitely never forgot her.

This is tiring. I didn’t think this would be so hard to tell but I keep forgetting bits and pieces and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not tonight, anyway. I just want to find Kate. But I guess if this is the only way to do it, this is what we have to do. Right?
I needed a way to shift from Kayley to Fia without a fuss. This? Lazy writing.

Sofia Gorsch

Kayley’s gone to sleep, by the way. Simon called earlier so she’s feeling a bit better but she’s gone to bed now which is a good thing. She doesn’t like sitting here just talking about Kate. All those past tenses upset her. Kay’s convinced Kate’s still alive. I’m not sure, myself. I’d like to think that she is but she just walked out three years ago and I never really knew her all that well so I don’t suppose I can be a judge of that.
Sofia is strange for me because when I think about Rocha’s story, I love her and when I think of Maria and the twins, I hate her. Passionately.

I’m going to take a wild guess and suggest Kay’s told you about Mum and Dad – my mum and dad, that is. I know she’s told you about la crise, I heard all of that. Heh, “la crise”. I say that like I remember any of the French I knew when we were in Singapore, but I don’t. That’s one of those phrases I picked up off Kate. Any time she didn’t like what something was, she’d just rename it in another language, as though that could make it impotent. Kate was brilliant like that. Did Kay tell you? Kate was a translator. We used to joke that every time Kate got bored, she’d just get up and learn a new language. I think she was learning Japanese when she met Jet. Well, when she met Jet again. Because after la crise, none of us saw Jet for fifteen years. Well, Mum did, and so did Maria, obviously. Maria less so because she was so ill during that time, but Mum definitely saw him. Mostly at work. He wasn’t so infatuated with her anymore. If I had to make a guess, I don’t think he was all that obsessed to begin with. He was just fond of Mum, is all. If I had to make an even bigger guess, I’d say that’s how things started with Kate, too. He was just fond of her.
Maria’s depression is chronic and extends beyond when everyone thinks it does; she was a functioning depressive until “The Crisis”. The next paragraph was important in terms of trying to explaining Jet and Kate. The problem with this fiction is that it’s all tell, not show.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about paedophilia. Jet Watson didn’t wake up one day and find himself outrageously attracted to a seven year old girl. He saw her that one time and then he didn’t see her again until we were all adults. But in all that time Kate never forgot. I asked her once, just before she wandered off, what he’d said to her that first time they met but she never told me. All she’d ever say was that he’d made her a promise, one that he’d never broken. I don’t know how true that is but then I’ve never known how much of what Kate told me is complete rubbish. It’s not like she was ever all that forthcoming with me and by the end of everything, she wasn’t even talking to Kayley or Simon. I don’t think she ever lied to me out of malice, not the way I would with her, but then again, she had nothing to be jealous of whilst I had to live with everyone thinking she was my mother’s daughter. I can see why people thought that; Mum and Maria Steiner looked alike anyway, and people often think that Kay and I are related. Kate really did look like Mum, especially the way she used to carry herself. It was a trait she’d picked up from Maria, staring at people until they looked away or they broke. Mum picked it up from her, too and we all use it, all of us girls. We all use it to get what we want as quickly as we can get it. But Kate’s a dancer, too, so she moves carefully and when she points her eyes at you, it’s deadly. I’m not even exaggerating anymore. Kate is like Mum – just completely beautiful. Not that Kayley isn’t beautiful, it’s just that she just doesn’t have the same grace to her. The Steiners are dancers, always have been and no-one denies that it’s the one arena in which Kayley bettered her sister but there’s just something other about Kate.
OK, already I’m sick of how Mary-Sue Kate is. When this all gets re-written, this will be so much more subtle than that.

Heh. I’m making about as much sense as Kayley now. We’ve been waiting a long time, you know, to figure out what’s been going on. The first we heard about something being not necessarily wrong, but out of sorts, was when Kate went on holiday and that was two years before anybody even guessed about Jet. But Diego wants to tell that bit so I should really get back to wherever Kayley left off, which was the fifteen-year hiatus. We all lived together but that doesn’t mean I’m anymore qualified than Kayley to talk about Kate and they were twins. You always get two types of twins – pairs that hate being the same and pairs that love it. Kate and Kay were the latter kind; they loved being sisters, they were each other’s best friend, always holding each other’s hands and sharing secrets in their little twin-code or whatever that was. What I mean to say is that even though Maria and David weren’t the strongest of couples, their three kids were so tight. And I’m not envious of that so much because I had my little brothers. I always missed Alicia, sure, because who wouldn’t want a sister after seeing Kate and Kayley? Kate was clever, and Kayley had dexterity. There was one point when Kate was going to go into economics, from what I remember, but then something happened and she ended up taking loads of language A-levels. Where that came from, nobody really knows. Kay quit school after her GCSEs and I don’t think anyone is ever going to forget David’s reaction to that one. But then she went to arts college and ended up getting really high dance qualifications so that all worked out.
Ha, I forgot I’d done that – mentioned David’s temper. Wow. I think I mastered subtlety! Ugh, now watch as Kate gets cleverer. I’m a little annoyed at myself right now because all of Kate’s skills get played up and none of her flaws, so you know, I know she’s not a Mary Sue but she damn well reads like one.

It was Kate that everyone used to watch though because she had serious brains on her. I mean, I’m not stupid but next to her, I damn well looked it. And Kate never condescended to talk to me, not after the whole awards night issue which I’m not going to go into because it’s just an example of how young I was and how old she was. Kate was always older than the rest of us. Mum and Maria used to talk to her like an adult whilst Kayley was just another one of us kids. So in fifteen years there were arguments and little hissyfits, and Kayley was cutting class whilst Kate was taking on extra classes and even though Dad came home, David never really did. If I thought anyone was to blame, I would blame him. Actually, I would blame that whole mess of a marriage because Maria Steiner was never exactly stable to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I love the woman. She’s like a second mother to me but I don’t need another mother, not with mine. And I love Mum, too, but it’s bit much to live up to perfection, you know. If Kate ever has kids, I’m going to step up and take care of them because they’ll be in exactly the same position as me, trying to live up to expectations beyond their reach. Though, the way that family is built up, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if her kids more than meet the challenge. Wunderkind and the like.
I was supposed to get Diego to talk about the awards evening fiasco – in which Sofia runs away for two days. Yeah, really.

Where was I? Kayley’s so right; this is difficult to tell. I mean, it’s difficult to know what’s important and what’s not because I suppose we’re trying to explain why things happened the way they did. You have to know Kate to know why she chose to live her life the way she did and I can’t really tell you much about her because nobody can. She was going to study Economic Science and for some reason switched to Modern Foreign Languages; she was going to go to Edinburgh but ended up at King’s in London. You know, she left home at eighteen and she never came back. Actually, now that I come to think of it, the whole languages thing was probably because of Ashley. Ashley is Maria’s cousin; the two of them grew up together. Ashley is very, very Jewish although nobody really knows why. Apparently it has to do with Maria’s granddad who was a lapsed Jew. Or something. Like I said, nobody really understands Ashley. If you want to get a good idea of Ashley’s relationship with Maria, think Kate and Kayley. Ashley is Maria’s Kayley, she’d the oddball in that house. Maria was good at school, Ashley really wasn’t but instead of taking up the arts, Ashley got into languages. She’s in India now, teaching street kids English so they can get proper jobs. Yeah, Ashley is fairly amazing as people go. Completely self-deprecating, but who wouldn’t be next to the shining example of Maria Steiner? See what I mean about parallels? The whole family is this bundle of “all this has come before” (ten points if you catch that reference). You know, I think she married a shaman. Are shamans even allowed to get married? Are they allowed to marry Jewish people? Never mind. When Kate went to university, she didn’t live in halls, she lived with her granddad and as Ashley was still living at home with her parents, they were all in the same house. Oh wow, this has just become really complicated, hasn’t it?
Stories about other people’s stories; that was supposed to be a theme.

Maria Steiner, originally Maria Jacobs, only child of Don Jacobs and Diane someone-or-other. I forget. It’s not so important because she died in a car accident when Maria was a baby, leaving Don with a toddler on his hands. So Don moved back in with his brother and his family who were living with Don’s step-father. Or something. I don’t know. He’s the Jewish one, by the way. Anyway, Ashley and Maria grew up together, then Maria left home and Ashley didn’t except to travel to other countries, so I suppose she did leave home, and Ashley’s dad (Don’s brother, for those of you still with us) ran off to Ireland with his mistress leaving Don, his step-father, his sister-in-law and Ashley all under one roof. Add Kate to that household and you have three years of insanity in the Jacobs household and a period of time when Kate and Ashley used to talk to each other every day. Except Kate changed her options before she went to university, so maybe Ashley had nothing to do with it after all. By this time Kayley’s already at art college and David and Maria were barely talking.

Poor Maria. No, really, I always feel so sorry for her. You know, she and David were never really all that happy but they could pull off the happy families look with ease because they were both excellent liars. I think she married him because she didn’t think anyone else would want her. They say war changes a man and Maria would always say, “Oh yeah? What does it do to a woman?” The way Ashley always used to talk about her, Maria used to be the quietest, softest, most harmless creature in the world. Now? Ask her to name military issue rifles and their basic stats. She can reel those numbers off in her sleep. Ask her to name the air strike formations most commonly used in the Gulf War and she’ll ask you if you’re talking about RAF or USAF. Ask her how she got those long scars on her feet, ask her what she thinks of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, ask her if we should have invaded Afghanistan. Go on, see what kind of answer you get. If you listen to Ashley, Maria left for the Gulf and never came back. Instead you got this woman who had no sense of identity beyond the war and her duty to her country. “Maria got broken,” Ashley used to say, “and just because she came back and got herself a hubby and lots of pretty babies, doesn’t mean shit. She was still broke.”

I didn’t believe it when I found out. Everyone knows the story, how David looked Maria in the eye across a dusty expanse and knew right then and there that he wanted to marry her and love her forever and ever and all eternity. David really loved Maria, I believe that. So when we found out about Jenny, we were all shocked. Well, everyone except for Maria and Kate. Funny thing with Kate - she loved her mum so much but she never clicked with her dad. They just didn’t get on. And there was nothing specific to it, either, other than Kate never really talking to David and David never really paying Kate much attention. Even when he did, she shunned his advances and you know, I never got that. I asked Kayley about it, too, and she just shrugged and said that’s how it went with the two of them. I always wondered if David did anything to specifically offend Kate but I can’t see that being all that true because when we were younger, David doted on both of his girls. There are all these photos from before we used to live together and everyone just looks really happy, Maria included. It was as though they all had what they all wanted the most. But then there was the war, and everything fell apart. Thinking about it, David’s affair wasn’t news to Kate at all. She must have known about it. I know Maria had known about it for years before David figured out that she knew but in all that time, she never said a thing. Then, when David finally worked it out, he stayed. He didn’t leave Maria for Jenny, he actually stayed. By that time Kate was living in her own place on the other side of the city and Kayley had moved in with me so it was Mum, Dad, David, Maria and Maria’s drug cabinet. She was taking a mass of serotonin inhibitors at one point; I know she was on Prozac for about six months and then they switched her onto Lithium for a little while. After that she was on cortisone before they switched her back to the serotonin cocktails. It’s a wonder she didn’t just take all the pills and swallow them down with a glass or two of water. I’m not saying that to be funny – she really was that much of a mess. She’d sit up all night in their half of the apartment, just sitting there staring at the TV. She never slept. Sometimes Mum would go to talk to her and sometimes I’d wake up and you could hear her crying which was the scariest thing of all. Women like Mum and Maria, they don’t cry easy and they certainly don’t do it when there’s a chance other people could see them. All that boys’ club pride. But yeah, Kate definitely knew about Jenny. Maybe that’s why she and David didn’t get along.
See, I know what I was trying to explain here but it’s messed up. Again.

That’s the first thing Kate and Kay ever disagreed about. Kate didn’t get on with David or any of David’s really scary family. (David’s one of eight kids from a totally orthodox Catholic family – the only boy. I swear, there are no people more scary than Maria’s sister-in-laws. They are all completely mental. Kay is manic about them, really likes how officious and snooty her grandmother is. Yeah, I don’t know either). The second thing was whether or not Kay should have cut as many classes as she did during secondary school. The third was whether or not Kayley should have been dating Tyler Munroe but I’ll leave that story. Maybe Simon’ll pick it up; he knows more about it than I do.
I didn’t talk about Tyler Munroe at all in this which is the stupidest cue ever. Tyler’s fairly important in explaining some of Kay’s stability in comparison to her sister but yeah, I just skipped that one.

I know you’re all wondering what this has to do with anything but it’s a big deal, Kate not telling Kayley things. They used to know each other so well they could practically read each other’s minds. Kate would always know where Kayley was, even if she never told her. I always thought that was a bit suspect, actually, because I never have a clue where Joachim and Bernardo are unless they’re in the house. I guess what I’m trying to point out is that Kate was drawing away from everybody even before Jet came back into her life. She was a world apart was our Katie, never really at one with the rest of us. She was always a little distant, nose in a book, head under earphones. Oh god, the earphones. Funniest thing in the world to wake up on a Saturday or Sunday morning and walk into their living room to see the twins in baggy sweaters and bright pink tights à la Fame and doing their ballet exercises. I never knew where that all started; I think it was one of Maria’s things to make sure that they always had some sort of routine. Before we moved in with them, they travelled around quite a bit, just like all military brats, and I guess Maria didn’t want them to be out of sorts so she always booked them into clubs and things. Easiest way to make friends, too. But then they ended up living with us and all that didn’t matter anymore. Didn’t stop them, though. That’s why they’re so damn good. When we moved in with them they both went to ballet classes twice a week and then later on there were modern groups and tap dancing sessions, even though they stopped that quite quickly. When we were in secondary, one of the teachers was offering classes in Latin dance. I remember Kate really took to that one but by the time they were doing their GCSEs, both of them were doing their own choreography. It’s Kayley’s thing, you know, teaching little kids how to dance, setting them up for local shows. She performs, as well. She’s doing theatre work at the moment but it’s not really what she wants to do; she picked up a leaflet for street tours the other day so maybe she’ll go into that. Can’t tell with Kayley. Kate used to enter little competitions. Used to win, too, normally some sort of cash prize. And every time she did, Kayley would be there to cheer her on and share in the celebration. I won’t lie; I was jealous of the two of them. I was jealous of them when they used to play together on the playground, I was jealous of them at home and I was jealous of them when we were in secondary school, Kate being so good at all the academia and Kayley being so popular with everyone. But as we got older and Kate moved in with her granddad, Kay and I got closer. Kay missed her sister a lot, especially during that period whilst she was at university but that’s when we became friendlier so I can’t say I particularly grieved Kate’s absence. It’s more that I grieved her total lack of acknowledgement. It’s not that she was cruel or particularly unkind, just that she ignored me and seemed to take my place in the house. Mum would ask her to look after the boys; Dad would ask her to help him with the car or taping the footie on a Saturday if he was out.
Oh wow, I really needed a paragraph break in there somewhere, but you do get this bleed through of how Sofia and Kayley talk – that was actually quite deliberate, their idioms and speech patterns cross-over. People who are friendly, and together a lot mirror body language and speech patterns and I wanted to get that across between Fia and Kay.

Lots of exposition in this part, too, about the girls and how they came to be the way they are (dancers and the such) and what Kayley’s doing now. The next section is so contradictory that I can’t believe I didn’t edit it out.

I think the biggest problem I had with Kate, though, was how much I liked her. On the rare occasions when we were left together she talked to me in her peculiarly quiet way, asking me about who was taking my classes that year or the latest school gossip. If the war broke Maria, university was Kate’s equivalent. Not because it did her any damage – the opposite, actually. Kate went into university this shy, anti-social bookworm and she came out a woman of the world. Where once she was silent, even sullen some might have said, now she was vivacious and flirtatious. Where once she was shy and retiring, now she was confident and assured. Whilst Kayley was still lounging around in dungarees, Kate was city-smart and sophisticated, not quite high maintenance but your average have-it-all girl, ready to take on the world. University brought Kate to the point where she was no longer a ghost but a full body and we loved her for it. We lived her successes vicariously. The more witty and publicly stunning Kate became, the prouder and more pleased we were. Katie was our starlet, between her dance contests and her nights out with Carmeline, her weekends in Paris with the Colberts and her flash-and-step life in the city, every day of the week. It’s difficult to get people to understand that, to understand how completely she was the focus of everything. Does she sound unreal to you? Flawless? A spoilt brat who became a snob? She wasn’t. She just, she wasn’t. I don’t know how to convince people. She was just lovely, too lovely, even, and people could love and hate her for that. Me included.
Kate goes to university quiet and shy, she meets Carmeline Dubuque, she develops an air of sophistique. The idea is that Kate outwardly portrays signs of success and those are signs that the others covet. Or something.

It’s late. I should probably head for bed, too. Diego and Zach will be here tomorrow, and I think Simon’s bringing Joachim, too. I can’t remember what I was supposed to be telling you. I know we agreed that Kay could deal with all the family history and that Diego and Zach were going to deal with the University years more explicitly but I can’t remember what I was going to— oh, of course. Three things, I suppose, just to be clear. One: everyone loved Kate. Two: Kate was withdrawn from the rest of us. Three: Kate didn’t get along with David (and David turned out to be a lying cheating bastard with a severely depressive wife whom he may or may not have loved). I think that’s about it. No doubt Diego will expound further on details I’ve neglected. Okay. More tomorrow.

 

Thanks, with much love and affection, to my wonderful beta and even more wonderful friend, tigertrapped.

Lazy conclusion, bad me. Little summary there was really more for my benefit than anyone else’s; that being said, it helps to clear things up before we head to Diego and Zachary.

The whole of the story is told in Kay and Fia’s living room; Zach and Diego live together but they’ve come over. I don’t really know who they’re talking to but after everything else that’s wrong with this fiction, I don’t think it matters so much. FYI, as they say, I’m actually pleased with the ideas in the fiction; my execution thereof leaves much to be desired.

|| Two&three.

Quick character notes that I may or may not repeat later on: Martina is love, Simon is level-headed but quite young, more so than his age. I’d written in this odd relationship he has with Kate’s dictionary without really explaining that it’s sort of a keepsake for him. Martina cuts through bullshit although not as directly as Rocha who, in my opinion, is a glued-together precursor to Kate. I wrote that wrong and a lot of people think Kate is Rocha’s daughter. That’s a no.

Hee, Diego! Diego tries really, really hard with Kate and I kind of feel bad that he doesn’t get anywhere with her. He worships her just a little, I think, and not just on a physical level. I think Diego would be perfect for Kate if I didn’t think he’s gay. I especially like the idea that he’s getting overly defensive over not knowing Kate’s hair-style (and not wanting to be labelled gay. That wasn’t my intention but having since convinced myself that he is as camp as they come…well, yeah). The comparison of Carmeline to Jessica Alba haunts me; I can’t think of Carmeline Dubuque without conjuring up an image of Jessica Alba now. Also, in here is a mish-mash of Maria’s story which really deserves to be a fic of its own. Cousin Ashley! I forgot about her and Grandpa. Yay. Ashley is fabulous and Jewish. That’s about it.

I’m very, very, very slowly rewriting Ophelia’s Flowers so that it’s a little cleaner and makes more sense. I’ve dropped loads about Sofia Gorsch, and a lot about Kayley Steiner, too. Now onto part 4.