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The Schuyler Fortune-Sweet Pea 1
Blossom's challenge #1: "Mom! John got the big piece!"
Blossom's rule #1: One guy cuts the cake. The other guy gets to choose first.
Marcus Jones ate his cereal calmly. He glanced to where his younger brother John sat, toying with his oatmeal and raisins. It was a morning game they always played. Marcus always won. He had figured John out from the beginning of time and although their intelligence and energy levels matched well, Marcus had an inner drive to compete and succeed that dwarfed that of his little brother. It was no competition really.
"May I please eat your cereal this morning," said Marcus calmly. "It looks so good that I will need to take it from you and eat it. Your body doesn't need it like mine does, your being so little and all."
That's all it took. John's reaction was instantaneous. The monster was after his morning meal again.
"Leave your mitts off my breakfast," yelled John. "You can't have it." He gobbled furiously; suddenly convinced that he would lose the meal to his ravenous, scary old brother.
He loved the fright and the flight, lived for it some days, thought Marcus, and sadly enough was at risk for anyone to dominate him because of it.
Their dad had left them a few years ago. They remembered some things about him. Drunk. They remembered. Gone a lot. They remembered that too. Hitting their mom. They remembered. Cranky all the time, never happy, didn't go to church, new jobs didn't last long. Marcus remembered that part better than John.
The absence of a father figure cut both ways; not having him around as a role model was a good thing because of his substance abuse and abusive behaviors, however any good traits he might have passed to them would not be modeled for them in his absence.
The family functioned better without him in the house and they didn't discuss him.
Their mother was named Blossom. They loved her to distraction without ever saying so, were in absolute awe of her majesty, her talent, her total power and her inspiring deep love for them. They knew this. They felt it. There never was any doubt in their mind that she would be on their side until the day they grew up (which at this rate would be never, unfortunately). She left early in the morning to work and earn money so they could go to church school and eat and pay rent and have clothes.
Blossom had called Marcus `Sweet Pea' from the day he was born. He couldn't ever remember a different nickname, wasn't partial to it in public, but it sang to him when his mom said it, so he just got over the embarrassment.
No other student at his school got called anything like that. He just wished she would call him Marcus in public, like that might even happen.
Their clothes excepting shoes and shorts were never new. Blossom and sons spent time at Goodwill finding clothes that were new to them and they all could recognize brands that they wanted to wear. Marcus would have cheerfully died and cut his throat rather than stand before Mrs. Smithers naked for a fitting of his shorts. Something had been happening down there for a while and no one but no one inspected that place.
Their mom's friend at church was good with the sewing machine and if the shirt or pants were not the exact right size, Mrs. Smithers would tailor it to the right size. Marcus didn't even like the pant fittings.
He imagined sometimes that Mrs. Smithers might just be sick in her head that day and yank down his shorts and give him the evil grin and ask him about the hairs and other stuff. She never did, but it always made Marcus sweat during the pant fittings.
Blossom cared for Mrs. Smithers' aged mother from time to time to even things out.
"It's time to go to school in five minutes," said Marcus, "and I don't want to be late."
Blossom always seemed to know if her sons were one minute late to school.
Truth be told, Marcus had no opinion about `late', but his mother did and that was motive enough. The two boys marched out of the apartment, locked the apartment door and got to the subway with two minutes to spare.
At school the brothers parted ways for different rooms. An unwritten Jones rule was that brothers covered brothers like a rug if needed and instantly unless one was dead. Neither had any thought about safety or security at school.
The scariest part of school was the principal and he didn't even have hair on his head.
John worked very hard for the grades he got, a mixture of A and B. Marcus didn't allow anything less than A in any class he ever took if he had to stay up all night or do extra credit or whatever. He pretty much willed this. He could do it, was worth it and wanted to.
As a result, he had zero real friends. Most of the students had friends; just people who they could hang out with and get school help from.
Marcus was competition and besides, his mother was Blossom Taneesha Jones, RN, a formidable adversary for her sons if trouble ever happened. They and their parents would lose every time on that score. Mrs. Jones was, gasp, even reputed to be on the School Board, if that could be believed.
Marcus never got in trouble. He didn't have time, thought it (trouble) was juvenile, and not worth the effort. John wasn't above a scrap here and there, but even he could see that things went better without trouble at school and the subsequent interview with his mother at home.
Marcus had a favorite teacher. Her married name was Marie and she knew everything, probably, that there was to know about birds. She had met and `birded' (whatever that meant) with Roger Tory Peterson himself, who as everyone knew was the author of all kinds of books about birds. That elevated her in his mind into a prominent rank of people who were experts on things.
When John got restless in school, Marie would take him out into the hall and tell him in a sad, quiet, whispering, tired voice that she knew he had a place in God's work someday. This thrilled John to the core and though he didn't half believe it because kids never got to grow up and have a place anywhere, it was a starting point that a teacher `knew that'.
Marcus and John minded their mother. Not always because they wanted to, but because it was much easier than what they both referred to as `The Interview'.
This process took time out of other pursuits, ended the same way each time with the interviewee in tears promising to be better in the future since Momma worked hard and depended on her men at home, etc.
They knew how it would turn out, hated it, tried their best to avoid it and always felt better when the Interview was over—because it was over.
Marcus took two tests to measure his readiness for college during his senior year of high school. His ACT score was 36. His SAT score was 1599.
He wondered all the rest of his life what question he missed on the SAT test but was very glad he missed one.
There were colleges in the United States that had a pile of applicants with perfect ACT and SAT scores that year. They ranged from places like Harvard College and Yale to William and Mary to Amherst to Princeton to the California colleges such as Stanford, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont and others. The college that caught Marcus' attention was located precisely in the middle of the country, Grinnell College in Iowa.
He couldn't say why, but the college brochure showing wide-open spaces was a factor and the general tone, the encouragement of diversity, the scholarship program all appealed to him. He applied and was shocked to be accepted.
He had not applied to another college, a move called 'foolish' by his principal. However, the letter he held tightly in his hand plainly stated that he, Marcus Jones, had been accepted into the class of something or other, congratulations and we'll be sending you more information and please acknowledge your acceptance by this date and here's the college catalog and...
He sat down at the kitchen table, put his head down on his folded arms and said, "Thank you Jesus. Please help me to do this right."
Later that summer it became apparent that money was to be an issue. The tuition at Grinnell was staggering, but he read that student aid was available and students were encouraged to apply. He did.
There were a number of grants and scholarships available for the major he was considering. The NAACP and many others had funds available to help as well. As it turned out, the college Endowment Fund was to be of astonishing help. Each student received a bill each month.
The tuition was posted as a debit, any grants, loans or scholarships applied as a credit. The difference was posted as a credit from the Endowment Fund with the resulting total balance of zero dollars every month.
This ensured that no student who was accepted ever had to leave because of money.
He said goodbye to John and his mother one day in Brooklyn and drove his beater car for which he and his mother had scrimped through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and then into Iowa. He arrived on a hot day. He passed corn fields around the little rural town, small houses with flowers and shade trees, then drove on into the college campus itself. He was waved into a field of cars and into a parking space.
"The entrance is down by the green flag," said the student who had waved him into the parking space. "Just take your driver's license or passport and your acceptance letter down there. It's ok to leave your bags in the car and lock it. Your parking space here is TT-47 and I'll write that on your acceptance letter now."
It looked like registration was a gigantic process out in a mown field. Ropes marked a path back and forth where new students waited patiently.
Each student showed their ID and acceptance letter to someone who handed them a Grinnell wallet card with a magnetic stripe on the back, a binder marked `Welcome to Grinnell College' and was handed off to two upper-class students who introduced themselves and welcomed him to Grinnell.
"The wallet card swipes everywhere including the cafeteria," he was told, "and you should carry it with you. The bookstore, the gym, the swimming pool, the library and certain campus events all can swipe you and most of it is included in tuition."
"Take us to your car," said one student of a sweating two-person team, "and we'll help carry your bags to your room and show you the campus. The room was big enough, had two desks in it and a bunk bed. No one else had claimed the room yet. They dumped the bags in the room and gave Marcus the keys to the room.
Since it was nearly suppertime, they headed to the cafeteria first, stood in line and took a tray. Marcus looked around and saw several buffets and students wandering around them randomly. The trio walked from one buffet to another, taking a tray and plate plus flatware and piling on the food that looked good to them. He saw Mexican, Italian, Japanese, and American steakhouse represented among other cuisines and decided he wouldn't starve at least.
The two students showed him the library, told him how the campus was laid out, how to get to classes efficiently from one building to another, looked at his classes and made sure he knew where they all were, asked if he had any questions and left him near the dormitory.
Marcus turned and went to his room. No one had joined him as a roommate yet. He chose the lower bunk and a desk and closet, unpacked and within minutes was asleep. He awoke in the middle of the night wondering where he was for a minute.
He was going to have to get a lamp. He didn't have a rug either. He hadn't thought about winter clothes and decided that would come soon enough. He had brought boots. He slept until his alarm rang at five-thirty a.m.
That first morning was a rush to shower, shave, dress and get to breakfast, allowing enough time to come back to the dorm to brush his teeth and get to class. His first class was an English screening essay meant to divide students according to composition skills to a regular class versus a so-called Honors class taught by the Chair of the department.
He wrote an essay on the assigned topic of Philosophic Underpinnings of Liberal Education', turned it in and left for the next class. The class following was a Medieval History of Europe' and was what he expected, lots of facts, lots of competition judging from others in the front rows with him who seemed to already know those facts. A class in "Basic Studies in Keynesian Economics' completed the morning.
The College Bookstore was jammed full of students. He met a set of twins in line for their books in Political Science, the other in Biology. They were from Maine, nice enough and easy to talk to. He met a girl from Los Angeles, a French major with blonde hair this side of white, a bit stiff. He met a nice Jewish kid from Manhattan, the first New Yorker he had seen here.
At lunch, he sat at a corner table rapidly stuffing his face and keeping one eye out for the time when a student came up to the table and asked if he could join him.
He couldn't reply for a second for two reasons.
First his mouth was full.
The second reason was a feeling he suddenly had as he looked at a pair of sad eyes on a handsome face that he had never seen but oddly enough, he felt like he had known forever. Like a brother.
Marcus already had a brother. This guy was different. He didn't act like anything. He just was somebody, maybe an expert on something, Marcus guessed. Maybe he was expert about life, or maybe feelings, maybe even about being a friend.
He quickly motioned him to sit down and they exchanged names, places and backgrounds. They talked about all of the things that people talk about when people meet for the first time and the more Marcus listened the more he felt like Michael, the guy's name, could be a friend.
He was matter of fact, quiet, deep, looked right at you, was interested in Marcus and his choice of major and minor and had lost his family. Marcus sat up at that one. What did he mean, `lost his family'?
Michael explained that there had been an auto accident some years ago. His father had been killed. He had not seen nor heard from his mother or sister since.
Marcus couldn't imagine how one would function without family.
He wondered how Michael got through and asked him.
"I just got up and did another day," replied Michael. "I didn't have a choice." His voice was matter of fact and a tiny shadow passed over his face like a cloud on an otherwise sunny day.
"Hey..." They both started to talk at the same time and laughed. They were off to study that afternoon.
Marcus stayed busy the entire afternoon outlining, memorizing, exploring the library and writing out questions about economics and history.
Before breakfast the next morning Marcus checked his mailbox downstairs. A note from the English department informed him that he had been chosen to attend the Honors Composition class based on his previous essay. Written at the bottom of the letter in red ink was the phrase: `Nice work'.
He didn't see Michael again for a couple of days, then happened to see him at breakfast one day where they talked about Michael's art major.
Marcus mentioned his Medieval History class and Michael began talking about Byzantine art. They discussed how paintings were illuminated. Marcus was startled to hear Michael say that his family owned a couple of icons from the period.
Money had always been an issue at the Jones house. Rather, the lack of enough money was constantly at issue. They didn't fit, exactly, in the middle economic class, he thought. But this guy (or his family that he lost) had real money.
Michael did not have what Marcus always assumed rich people had, that is, some kind of attitude toward people who had less than they did.
The revelation about the picture was offered just like one would tell someone they usually ate at Burger King. The idea wasn't served up with attitude sauce, thought Marcus. He liked Michael for that and decided their incipient pal status wasn't in any danger yet.
During their first year while studying together one evening in the library, Marcus asked Michael why they weren't rooming together. "We're spending so much time in the library, it would save on walking time if nothing else." Michael quickly agreed and since their roommates were friends, a quick swap was arranged.
Marcus was struck by the lack of family pictures of Michael's family. No dad. No brother...well, that was expected since there was no brother. No sister pic. No mom pic. Marcus had a lot of family photos except for none of his dad.
They had some classes together. Marcus didn't drink alcohol so was missing at some of the dorm partying but never missed meals. Michael learned that he came from a single parent home and that Marcus' mom was an RN. Neither was athletic in the competitive sense but enjoyed getting up early in the fall and spring to run around the campus. Nobody in his or her right mind ran during an Iowa winter save those track and field types that wanted to suffer to be in shape for spring events.
Marcus and Michael did the usual survey of each other's bodies in their room and in the showers.
Marcus had perfect brown skin, brown eyes, short black hair, a cute butt and a dark seven-inch cock, thick and slightly curved upward when erect.
Michael had perfect tanned white skin with a few faint freckles on his chest, prominent nipples, a bubble-butt ass, a swimmer's build and an eight-inch long and very thick straight circumcised cock. He had a treasure trail of hairs down the center of his abdomen and shaved all but a two-inch square of short hair just above the base of his cock.
Both men shaved around their anus; both shaved their testicles and around the base of their penis. Then the day came when Michael dropped his towel and walked over to Marcus and asked him if he liked what he saw. Marcus liked.
They discovered the joys of kissing, followed a minute later by blow jobs, inexpert at first, improving with time.
Their first fuck was a few days after that and Michael was a fabulously satisfied bottom. They practiced both top and bottom and since Marcus preferred top most of the time, that was the direction their positions went.
After that, practicing their new skills was a regular thing. Michael told Marcus he had a friendship with a school friend who moved away, but no one since.
Marcus still didn't know about details about the extent of Michael's fortune.
Blossom Challenge #2: "I Don't Want to Clean the House." Blossom Rule #2: Mom and two boys are the team. One is captain, the others are runners. The captain picks up a sock (or whatever), hands it to a runner, tells him or her to run and put it in the hamper (or wherever) and to run back as fast as possible and yell `Now What?' The game stops when the house is picked up.
Marcus found a summer job at a corner market in Brooklyn during the rest his four years at Grinnell. The pay was decent and close to the apartment. John was enrolled in a day camp at the church school. Marcus came home by four p.m. to cook supper for them.
He helped John with a correspondence course in Latin that summer. He noted that John had matured some during the year. John didn't whine as often and trouble didn't seem to fascinate him as much. The weekend schedule hadn't changed since Marcus was a baby.
Friday night sundown began the Sabbath, no work on Saturday, just church, Saturday night sundown was the end of the Sabbath, and then popcorn and games at the school on Saturday night with an occasional movie under the eagle eye of the principal, then museum hopping on Sunday.
Marcus had a thing about museums. Looking at some art objects made him feel he was back in time somewhere for a minute. He found some of the medieval art pieces he had studied at Grinnell in the Cloisters and some at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He missed Michael a lot since the end of the year, wondered where he was and what he was doing. He telephoned... Michael seemed distracted but happy to hear from him. He understood Michael was in Pennsylvania at his own house and was coming back to Grinnell in the fall.
Back at Grinnell, Marcus quickly discovered that finance and economics were easy for him to understand. He had a memory somehow related to an elephant about these things. His favorite subject surprised him and stunned his business professors.
He became known in the department as the stock market genius. He knew every ticker symbol, every fact about markets that anyone could throw at him in the form of a question, knew how to read company balance sheets, profit and loss statements, SEC filings and could analyze financials better than most of his teachers.
He sniffed out `bullshit' in company reports trying to conceal mismanagement, could read company histories accurately, recognize those on the decline, and those with potential.
This arcane talent may have been boring to some, but his teachers recognized his talent and pegged him for great things down the road.
He aced the complicated theories of economics and analyzed the flow of money and its effect on local and international conflict in a senior paper which caught the attention of the chair of the department.
He volunteered for a student position on the Endowment steering committee, worked to learn the on and off-campus politics of the Alumni department, participated in fund-raising and, made it a point to meet Alumni, and lost no chance to boost the school with others.
He graduated with a 3.9 GPA with highest honors in the same class with Michael, by now his best friend and lover, and was disappointed only that Michael and his mom and brother didn't get to meet at graduation.
By this time, he knew some things about Michael.
Michael's family had been wealthy, he was originally from near Philadelphia, he wanted to study law perhaps but wasn't totally committed to that yet and he had a trust that helped him with some money. He had no idea how much money; he had no clue what Michael really wanted or needed.
It was fun to hang out with Michael's head.
Both of them.
His conversational skills, his cheer, his sense of humor, passion and decorum and lack of decorum in bed... all appealed to Marcus.
He supposed that he wouldn't be seeing Michael anymore, went home and with his great recommendations and academic background landed a job at a brokerage firm in Manhattan.
His teachers had discussed his career path. They warned him not to waste his reputation in less than ethical business dealings. They emphasized having a mentor that was serious about the stock market and who had a good reputation on the Street.
Marcus found a place just like that and his mentor, William Hunt, taught him the intricate points of dealing with the public, of explaining choices to clients, of recognizing self-interest when it entered business dealings, and revealing conflicts of interest to clients. Marcus was a natural at doing things right.
All he had to do was think of Blossom, his mom, who would cheerfully arrange for an "interview" with him in any circumstance if she thought it wise. He thought back over those days, quietly thanked his Heavenly father for her, and also for the possible benefit of not being exposed to his earthly father who might have taught him different values.
Marcus was pretty sure he wasn't perfect. His understanding was that he wasn't, in fact, anywhere near it.
Marcus was called to the top floor of the Brokerage office by the Managing General Partner one afternoon. The MGP told him that a very important (that being code for very rich') client had requested the most junior broker to be his" broker. That was a big deal.
Marcus, in the elevator, asked for help on this one, and emerged feeling that this was going to turn out well. He just had that feeling.
The MGP had about ten seconds to explain that I had better be cognizant of the gigantic favor she was bestowing. I had another five seconds to walk that one back because number one, the guy didn't know me from Adam and number two, the MGP didn't know the guy either so wasn't bestowing any favor. The guy had requested the most junior guy for his or her own reasons.
After being refreshed by sweet reason, I walked into her office and about dropped on the floor in shock, because there was Michael Schuyler-Ross in the flesh and our eyes met very briefly but not before a message flashed between us: `mum's the word, kiddo...let's play this one professional and cool'.
The Managing General Partner continued to impress upon me that she was counting on me to apply all of the fine details and pay careful attention to this very important client and finally Michael managed to thank her for her kind attention and assured her that he was sure that a great working relationship would be forthcoming.
All of this MGP anxiety was, I think, because a secretary slipped her a note, probably some quick intra-agency bio from the list of people they would like to get their hands on and probably never would. It might have been `Michael-specific' financial information. I don't know.
If the Brokerage didn't know about VIP types, they would miss them on occasion, so I half-expected they had to have some information about him, his family, his relatives and maybe his brand of Jockey shorts.
All of that information can be data mined and companies like mine paid dearly for that kind of data. It was a cost of doing business for which the client inevitably pays for anyway. The costs of missing a really good customer didn't bear thinking about.
In the quiet commotion and nervous energy that followed, it seemed perfectly natural to accept his four point one million dollar Trust check which I perfectly understood to be a monthly thing from here on out for him and naturally, I gave him the perfect new broker speech, the fiduciary speech, had him sign all the papers in the standard pack, and asked how much risk he was willing to take (although in the sake of complete honesty here, I made that decision for him).
My friend wasn't going to lose ten cents on his investments while I was taking charge of his account, by gum, unless the stock market had the gall to actually go down someday. We finished our business, but not until I gave him my card with my number and asked him to supper. Then is when the nerve attacks hit, later when I got home. This wasn't just Mrs. Whoosit walking in and depositing forty dollars in a brokerage account to invest for retirement. This was the so-called `big time' and with my best friend and lover, no less. Why was playing with Michael's money so scary?
I was still a wreck at Gunter Seeger NY that night until he told me he was there because I invited him and to chill out. Then I could get through it. Dining with a millionaire was a first. Not after that. It was my glass ceiling, which cracked and broke that evening.
I watched him eat and order. I watched him chew. He didn't seem to be strange or weird or uppity or filthy (a word I'd seen right next to the word `rich' before). He just looked and acted like anyone else. He was also delighted to see me; We talked about Grinnell and art, sex, money in general, my job, his place, friends, and weather until time for dessert.
Then the moment approached.
I needed to know what he ordered for dessert. It was crucial, absolutely important to me that he order some, because I wanted some... it had to involve chocolate as a sign that all was well in the world and ice cream, which would prove he was just as normal as any poor schmuck.
I heId my breath.
The waiter sauntered over under the watchful eye of the maître d'hôtel, swiped the used plates off the table, brushed the breadcrumbs into a little linen-lined basket and asked if there was anything else.
For dessert, he recommended the something or other gateau with rose-paste icing and they had apple pie a la mode and Black Forest cake. Michael appeared to ponder these choices for a long minute, then turned to the waiter and lowered his voice so the waiter had to pay attention to hear him.
"Gregor," he said, "you have served us well and the tip will reflect the great service as well as the great food. I don't want to end this important meal with any old average and disappointing food. The only thing that will please me," and here he stopped to ensure Gregor's complete attention, "will be a bowl, a large bowl, of double chocolate ice cream with three cherries on top."
Gregor blinked his eyes, coming out of a trance or something, and looked at Michael and mutely nodded. "Uh, sure." His face clouded over, thinking of the logistics of getting that versus saying no to a large tip, deciding the logistics would be worth it, then turned to me. "And you sir..."
Delighted, somewhat delirious, "Make it two."
The thousand-dollar tip on Michael's card bought him, finally, an end to the slight upward curl on the upper lip of the waiter and the put-on offish attitude of the sommelier, who had felt slighted, and the maître d'hôtel who had figured a couple of college kids weren't going to make his day.
Instead, the waiter turned into a normal kid whose face relaxed, then lighted up into joy along with a kind of rosy suffusion of the skin on his neck. The sommelier actually smiled cordially and the maitre d'hotel struggled mightily to remain, well, maitre-ly. He turned into a nice older man who smiled and thanked Michael for the generous tip like anyone would.
After that I wasn't afraid of wealth. If I had been in awe of anyone who could buy anything he or she wanted, I was over it.
My new understanding about money was what it could accomplish on a personal level. That idea had a huge effect on my future. That night in the loft we had reunion sex. We explored the hypothesis that a couple can't come too much or too often. Right there in Michael's loft. Just before sleep hit, we decided more studies were needed.
That was the start of a great summer, an even closer friendship. It led to watching Michael plan a new home, which turned into the Schuyler Museum, and becoming roommates there.
I learned, in bits and pieces, why he was who he was, what had really happened to him, his grief process for his family and I got to be alive the day my mom found us in Schuyler Park and discovered that she was going to spy on us.
That event was too good to pass up, so we waited for her to enter the Museum. After introductions in the front hall, she had to go back to work without a tour or much of a conversation.
I was impressed that she threw away part of her lunch just to find out what her boy was up to. She told me later later that the concept of a black man and a white man being close friends just wasn't the norm when she was little.
I found the present unsatisfactory still, but better for those who wish to live and love as they choose.
When Michael asked my family and I to use a couple of Museum suites as our own, I accepted right away after talking to my family. When I had a chance to think about that one some questions came up.
Why', when' and why' were right up at the top. Then why' again. What was going on in his head? What did I mean to him and vice-versa. I knew that I loved him in a fierce way and would have cheerfully harmed anyone who tried to hurt him.
We were lovers at college and I had erotic dreams about him, loved being in the same room, loved his mind, could sit quietly reading with him for hours on end, enjoyed eating with him (he didn't slurp or anything). I was proud of him, liked him, was inordinately fond of making love to him. I would have died before I said it out loud in public just yet, but I loved him.
And there it was. The heart of the matter.
The concept of a man loving another man wasn't received well at one time. Even though David and Absalom had been pretty good buddies in the Bible, and although their love story survived in writing over centuries, some still had it out for people who wanted to be with the people they loved.
In the past twenty plus years or so, in and out of organized churches, minds were slowly coming around to the idea that love is love and it all comes from one place.
One day we were relaxing in my suite or his (I don't remember) and we'd had lavender ice cream, another favorite of both of ours. I looked over at him and knew it was time.
Any guy that ate lavender ice cream with me had to take, and pass, the next-level test. He had to go out and meet my mom in that way.
As the guy I wanted to be with for my foreseeable future anyway. She had already met Michael, but not as that guy.
I asked Michael to visit her in Wyoming where she had taken a patient. Michael said `ok' and away we went. The time in Denver was spent at museums, restaurants, and we also took a tour of the Mint.
Making love always left me a little short of breath. Denver's altitude failed to disappoint. Neither of us was bored with the sex, breathless or not.
Neither of us did the snow ski thing, especially at that `short of breath' altitude, but we took a limo up to see Billy the Kid's old haunt at Steamboat Springs.
In the snow, we kissed a lot, held hands, and threw snowballs. Not to mention the fort we built, wrestling in the snow and fucking behind a tree.
Watching him meet his mother, finding his mom who had been my mom's patient all those years was awesome, even overwhelming. I cried. He cried. She cried. We all cried. That sounds a little like Latin students declining pronouns or something, or getting ready to demand ice cream, but the waterworks worked that day.
My mom was cordial toward Michael and his mom to me, I think, though neither was overly enthusiastic about the news of our love.
It was a day of mixed messages, but we were a mixed couple; he was white, I was black, he was `of the world', I was pretty basic Christian, he was rich, I was otherwise. Both of us were 'in love' with each other as far as we knew; both determined to live our life as we wished.
We returned to New York in that wonderful Gulfstream, again pampered by the crew.
Then the day we went to Philly to the trust offices and nearly left because of the noisy party going on in back. I wondered what girl Michael was draped around and didn't like it, but knew he was glad to see somebody and then was happy I hadn't said anything because, by crikey, it was his own sister. His lost sister.
I never had one, so didn't know what I was missing, but it sure seemed nice after the `getting to know you' part. She gave me a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek.
"Thank you for loving my brother, Marcus. Can I be your sister?" Barbara couldn't have said anything nicer. She had the Schuyler looks and Michael's tenderness.
I reminded Michael to call his mom. He thanked me for rescuing him and I decided that also was a nice thing to say and that if he ever needed rescue again, I would step up to the plate right away.
We all flew on Rainier the next day to Wyoming for celebrations, then back to New York City to let Carol, Barbara and her friends see the Museum.
When Carol and Michael told my mom that the trust was donating a billion dollars to ADRA and asked me to be fund manager for the Blossom Jones fund for Africa, I knew I had arrived professionally. I was aware that some in my profession would have given their left nut to be in my shoes...well, ok, perhaps just a biopsy or something.
There I was, getting ready to work with a budget that didn't have much in the way of limits. It would have been easy for me to believe that my own work got me there. My work, clearly, didn't get in the way of the end result, but I was certain that this was some kind of blessing.
The salary and benefits were increased compared to what I had made before and to boot, I got to move in as Michael's roommate.
He wouldn't take rent money and I didn't push it. It was a touchy thing with me until I realized I didn't want a renter-landlord relationship with him.
The suites in the Museum had wide entryways. Michael told me early on that he felt narrow foyers were cold and not welcoming to guests. I didn't contradict him since I didn't have an opinion.
He insisted that there be a powder room and a coat closet by the door. Directly ahead was a large living room and through a wide portal off forward and to the right was another smaller sitting room with library shelves to the ceiling all around except one wall for paintings and plinths for displays of sculpture, flowers, or plants. Tall rolling ladders served the library walls.
From the living room forward and to the left were wide corridors to bedrooms and kitchen and a sunny, bright dining room, again with walls for paintings. The only fireplace was in the living room. The heating and air-conditioning for the suite was central. The bedroom windows could be opened a crack for fresh air, but only that much. A Delacroix primitive adorned one wall.
Somewhere in Colorado he, Michael, told me, Marcus, what he was really worth, trust and all.
I think I made a joke of it because the truth was I was stunned and didn't know what say about it and didn't want to sound like a schmuck.
His worth was what it was. The one thing I didn't know yet is how he felt about it down deep and what his wealth meant to him, if anything.
I didn't lose any sleep over it.
He talked about money like my little brother talked about mashed potatoes; glad he had it, but no feeling about it that I could tell anyway.
The work at the fund made me feel powerful. I had responsibility and the authority to make things happen. I could make or break people, but I wasn't built to hurt people, so I didn't. I went over the seven deadly sins.
Ego entered in to everything everyone did, I knew, but not hubris. I had other sins to process, just not that one. I had to hope that pride, the bad kind, wasn't too bad yet.
I wasn't above selfishness yet. As far as I knew, it wasn't necessary to be greedy. I liked to eat but didn't live to eat. I dismissed gluttony from the list.
Lust wasn't off my plate especially with Michael and we both appreciated a good-looking stud who was cheerful and who cleaned up well. I didn't hate anybody.
Sloth wasn't my problem. Had I let myself, I'd have worked myself to death.
Wrath and its cousin, fear, were tough for me. I was afraid of poverty, of being alone, of dying by myself, of drowning (an inexplicable fear), of looking stupid, of being stupid, of being devalued and of thinking that I wasn't good enough.
Those things made me passionately afraid/angry until I talked myself down and reminded myself that God loved me for who I was and who I could be, both.
As for the malicious envy part, yeah, there were people I wanted to be like and things that I wouldn't have minded having but I had zero desire to act on the `wanting to go out and get it at all costs' part.
This, I found, was what most of Wall Street suffered from and with which I did not identify.
The job with the Blossom fund for Africa thrilled me in a lot of ways. We made a ton of money and all of Zimbabwe prospered because of one generous woman who decided to empower other women.
I got to see that at a distance. My mom saw it first-hand.
Carol and mom travelled to Bulawayo the next year and danced in circles with women and families who had been closer to subsistence levels previously and now could feed and in some cases educate their families with the extra income.
Michael and I had talked about children for a long time. Having them, I mean. What I really mean is we wanted, we thought, to have some in the house. Like Ajax or vinegar or paper towels or pillowcases.
It was something people did. We didn't want to miss anything in life and since we roomed together and had the wherewithal, we could do this too.
We decided that having kids around the house and someone to take over our duties someday, perhaps take care of us in our old age someday wouldn't be so bad.
I found the devil, as usual, to be in the details. We decided to speak to our mothers and they were fine with the idea.
We made the grand decision to hire an adoption agency to find a pair of twins, perhaps between two and five years of age, so we could skip the diapers and bottle-feeding part and jump right into the fun part of being parents.
Little did we know.
We ran across some twins that lived on a sidewalk in front of a small convenience store and hustled (read begged' and borrowed') for a living since their perpetually inebriated mama hadn't the time nor inclination to be bothered with them and their dad wasn't in the picture.
Eric and Loren Bertoni were two little varmints who had acquired the manners of Attila the Hun on their own, I guess, and limitless energy, no doubt a channel of survival or something, really unfettered by words like shhh' and phrases like it's not time for that' and you mustn't' and nice boys don't' and the awesome admonitions `we Jones don't do that' and the most awesome of all "Jesus wouldn't want you to do that'.
These kids ignored should' and ought'. They focused on and were experts in how to get' and how can we' and `here's one we can outdo' and stuff.
The adoption went through after months of evaluation of us, our finances, our motives, our criminal records (none found) and at the end, a juvenile court granted the motion for adoption of Eric and Loren Schuyler-Jones.
The judge just sat shaking her head and rolling her eyes as she announced her decision.
We thought at the time it was odd behavior for a judge.
The twins had visited the museum, of course, before that day with the judge. The first visit we had expected some awed, hushed behavior in the grand surroundings but saw nothing of the kind.
They bounced around the thick carpet, asked if they were really going to live here, knocked on a Vermeer to see if there was anything behind there, held their groins, asked for the bathroom, asked if `there was sumpin to eat here', wanted to see their room, and after ten seconds ran with the nanny out to the Park, where children's activities, the swings and gym, fountains and lots of grass beckoned.
We followed at a discreet distance to observe.
They would have stayed out forever having fun and running races and actually watching some other kids play for thirty seconds. Then they tried to outdo them hanging from miniature monkey bars, but soon they announced they were 'due back at the store by six p.m. for supper'.
The cook sent a sack lunch with them and while running out the door, they threw out the apple, kept the orange, tossed the carton of milk, ate the candy bar and looked at the celery with peanut butter like they had just seen a monster or something. They just shrieked. My take was these were little boy noises, not real fear.
That first visit was a harbinger, as they say, of things to come. We were just too dumb to see it. Probably just as well. One can only take so much at a time and the entire future seen at once would have overwhelmed an ox.
That first day we brought the twins home in the limousine from court, they weren't sitting still. On average they were, for them, but they weren't. They bounced from the front seat to the back, from side to side, stood up, sat down, looked out the windows on the side and back and front and plunked down on the seat, yelled, laughed, punched each other and yelled `stop it' a dozen times.
It wasn't girly behavior; it wasn't one of the brother messages that my own brother John and I had sent each other that I recognized.
I had a tiny idea I was seeing a message between them and to us, `hey, we've got a situation here and we've no idea how to handle this and since we don't, no worries, and by the way when is lunch'?
Lunch with several forks wasn't the best idea. More forks. More weapons. The cook had an idea they might like mac and cheese and she was, bingo, right. That was the entire meal for them, not the meal served, but we weren't trying to conquer Rome in a day. The nanny of the month rushed out after them to the park along with security, which presented a problem to them only at first, because why would adults want to be there, so they ignored them.
The security staff didn't melt away, the kids ran for it, but the same gates that kept people from getting in were very successful at keeping people from getting out, sort of like a big zoo. There are stories in life, some of which deserve a merciful curtain to be drawn, and this became one of those.
A cautious truce with security staff was established after some weeks when the twins decided it wasn't worth their time to play games they couldn't win. They had given it their manly shot and failed. This isn't to say they were cowed or out of will to fight for their future. Not really.
We had decided that lack of will wasn't going to be any sort of component of their psyche. Will power, they had. `Won't power'? They had also had enough of that.
A series of tutors were ignored, abused, insulted, bitten, and we saw emotions flair up in these little kids that children shouldn't have had to express. To the extent that the adult with them was in charge, the twins were absolutely determined to challenge.
Except Michael and me.
They knew, who knows how, that Michael and I weren't to be toyed with past a certain point and although we loved them (some), there was a line we made them toe with us. We did not spank. We didn't insult them with the corner thing. We didn't withhold privileges.
We knew the absolute worst thing that we could inflict was "The Interview." They hated those with a purple passion bordering rage. Sitting and listening to either of us pontificate at length about their sins and peccadillos in the face of parental goodness and long-suffering was nearly more than they could take. I believed that they felt both used and abused when an interview occurred.
What goes around comes around, I thought. John and I felt the same way when we were little.
Minor victories, sitting up straight at the dinner table, saying please and thank you, saying 'how do you do'...those things happened. The major victory was looking in at bedtime after Eric and Loren were finally asleep and seeing the little cherubs intact, no doubt dreaming of havoc upon awakening.
We did have a bedtime routine. They would not tolerate a story out of a book. But they begged for verbal stories about anything. Made up, about anybody, true, not true, fairy tale, not fairy tale, about Aunt Barbara or Uncle Jack or Grandma Carol or Uncle John or Grandma Blossom even, although stories about my mom made them shiver for some reason.
It was like they elevated her to `most scary person alive' status. Eric and Loren listened to her when no one else could get through. Like no one else. Mom's voice could be tender and tough at the same time. She, to them, was the voice of a higher power, I was pretty sure.
And there was the tiny matter of church. The first episode of church, which in fact was pretty near the last episode, darn close to the last episode actually, occurred on a sunny Saturday and as we entered we noticed them looking at people's clothes. Being true unbelievers to begin with, they weren't interested in anything theological, but noticed clothes right away.
Two loud voices shouted, "Hey lady, where did you get that big feather in your hat?"
Grabbing their crotch and twisting around like they had to go the bathroom urgently, they chorused loudly,
"We seen one in a pawn shop like that once." "We hit it with a stick and we're pretty sure it wasn't a sorting hat."
These bon mots were uttered while they screwed their eyes heavenward and sideways and squeezed their knees together.
To a tall, thin, dignified black woman with their vocal volume turned up high,
"You need more food or anything? We got carrots and, um, sandwiches at our house if you're hungry."
Michael and I were squirming, sweating and trying to resist the urge to wring our newly adopted kids' necks. As the organ began to play, they loudly commented on the `noise up there', which made it hard for them to hear anything. They didn't sing a note but conversed loudly during the morning hymn.
The piece de resistance came when the pastor in his great preacher's robe got up to speak, interrupted only by two little boys laughing their heads off.
"Where does he get his clothes," they hollered, laughing out loud, having launched themselves into the aisle for a better view, then rolled on the floor and laying on their backs on the aisle carpet, kicked the end of the wooden pew rapidly with their new shoes.
The interview following that church session was extraordinarily long. By the time Blossom and Michael and I had conducted an interview for each, separately, two chastened little boys presented themselves for lunch which might have consisted of gruel, except for the kindness of their adopted father's hearts, more accurately, what was left of the kindness there.
Blossom adopted the religious training bit after that. We did go back and wonder of wonders, they sat on either side of her on the pew and didn't move a muscle the whole time or say a word. The arrangements leading to that state of affairs was known only to the three of them. Sabbath School (OK, Sunday school to everyone else) consisted of age-arranged groups of kids with a teacher. Theirs consisted of kids, a teacher and Blossom sitting directly behind them.
Grandma Blossom believed in exercise, water, pure air and sunshine (which the kids were into) and good nutrition, meditation, having a friend to talk to and vitamins (not so much).
They were not into good nutrition at first, never did meditate that I know about and had each other to talk to. Blossom saw to the proper administration of the children's vitamins and we were all astonished to see a Jack in the Beanstalk effect on growth and attitude.
Their height shot up out of proportion to their weight and their body mass index lowered gradually. They remained blonde and blue-eyed and handsome, some Nordic ancestor genes chuckling to themselves in their chromosome.
Their first visit to Aunt Barbara's place (the Oval Office) was impressive. By that time, limousines were oh-so-boring, but when we drove up to the White House and the gates opened without an interview at the guard hut, they noticed. When the military honor guard opened the car door, they noticed. When a Marine opened the door of the White House, they noticed that. Up in the residence, Jack Jr. and Hannah made nice to the newbies and the twins noticed.
But it wasn't long after all this noticing that they latched on to Michael and drew him away from the others. "Do they eat here or what? We're hungry and have to go to the bathroom. Can we have some ice cream?
"Yeah, I'll have butter brickle."
"No doofus, they won't have the good stuff in this old house."
"Dad, we'll settle for peppermint ice cream. Both of us. Two scoops in a regular cone if they have those."
The Oval Office did not impress them. The Situation Room flunked. The railings looked interesting, but they were discouraged from sliding down the bannisters. They were ready to leave ten minutes after arriving. Aunt Barbara was a bust. Uncle Jack was OK, but he wasn't a kid really so didn't count.
Anyone standing at attention was a target for poking and pinching to see if they could make him or her move or say uncle. The slightest grimace would set off a discussion of the technique used to make it happen and a repeat performance was likely unless one of us was watching, spoiling the fun.
It appeared that the Rose Garden was a crashing bore and the White House lawn was a place to lie down and look up at the overhead trees for about two minutes.
I briefly had a vision of two kids who had missed out on long afternoons in the hay field, straw hats on to shade their faces and a twig of wheat to chew while they solved middle America's problems of not enough rain and the price of corn and hogs at auction.
Then as they raced, yelling, straight at Marine One, rotors still turning slowly, that scene vanished, and I realized these kids had missed out on the cornfields and rotated straight to the White House. Strange world, that.
Puberty arrived for both at age twelve. Loren could talk of nothing else than tits. Eric just stared at his brother like he had two heads. Their voices cracked, their underarm and groin hair sprouted, they developed some muscle and if possible, the twins became even more assertive.
They had their own rules about food. They wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread. They wouldn't look at wheat bread or whole grain bread or ciabatta or sourdough.
They were used to white, ate white, liked white and, by gum, they wasn't having nothing else but the good Wonder Bread stuff. Imagine someone trying to slip something else over on em when the real thing was available.
Avocados they would eat only with salt and Mexican hot sauce. Brussels sprouts, turnips, and parsnips need not have applied. Celery by this time with peanut butter was tolerated, barely. Salad was OK, depending on the day mostly, but without blue cheese dressing it didn't go in their mouth.
They had exactly the same tastes in food with one exception. One ate fish, the other didn't. Neither ate pork or ham or bacon or shellfish or venison. Both ate turkey exactly once per year under the following conditions: one slice, hot, with mashed potatoes on one side and two kinds of cranberry sauce on the other.
Yes, two kinds, the canned kind, which they saw as the "quality stuff" and the relish kind, eaten under protest because it was, well, it just wasn't as "high quality" as the kind that required the can to be opened at both ends and slowly, inexorably scooted out, then sliced perfectly (by them) and shoved over to a plate.
They drank water, milk and orange juice by and out of the pitcher. Corn and peas were acceptable food. Lima beans and okra, surprisingly, were edible. They ate anything grown underground. Beets, potatoes, onions were just fine cooked anyway they came to the table. Above the ground, well, it varied.
They loved broccoli. They loved yellow summer squash. They hated zucchini. They wouldn't eat kale. They liked swiss chard with lemon on it and sometimes mayonnaise. Pasta was good, lasagna they could eat anytime. They hated rice.
Some days the cook had her own feelings about them, too.
The maids got along well with them. They taught the twins to make their own bed and insisted that they do it. Blossom may have had some influence in this process, because the sheets were mitered and taut, just like in a hospital. They got really good at folding clothes which was one of their chores. They weren't wild about kitchen prep work but since that was easy to check off their chore list every day, they didn't complain too much about that.
For some reason they hated to take out trash. The most awful caterwauling took place on the days they were asked to take the wastebaskets, empty them into larger black plastic bags and tote them off to the waste bins.
They hated it.
They once said that no self-respecting child would do that. They only said it once and my mom had an interview with them about taking out the trash. After that I rarely heard anything said, but they still were very reluctant.
I wondered at the time just what things they had seen early in life or what bins they had gone through at that time or what they saw in those garbage bins to make them hate that job.
They wore whatever their nanny laid out the night before. That wasn't a problem. They took it off whenever they wanted to in the park. Too hot or busy for clothes? Take em off.
The nannies (plural because they rotated and often left) came up with strategies like taking extra clothes along. We told security to take a very dim view of clothing optional twin behaviors in the public park; that helped.
The one thing the twins took dead serious was school. Blossom told them that this was their work and the rest of their life depended on how well they did. As soon as they discovered grades and ideas and a grading scale of A through F, they were having none of the F stuff.
With internal standards to maintain of their own, they lacked little in the comprehension and sheer learning-power department. They wanted to be liked, needed to be liked, and when an adult complimented them on their grades, they would act like they had been insulted.
Their thinking ran along the lines of `Of course I got an "A" in algebra, I expected to get it and deserved to get it and I really don't know why you are making such a fuss over it'.
As they turned away, a careful observer could see the little grin, the pleasure on their faces.
They may or may not have been socially handicapped for a while, but in school they reigned as lords of the manor. Yes, part of it was twin rivalry. `Doofus' was a term, an affectionate term with a bite; it wasn't a word they liked having applied to themselves.
They loved to use the word for anyone with as much as a tenth of a grade point average below theirs, however.
When they were done with their homework, usually ten minutes into a class, they were turning sidewise to a neighboring student, turning clear around, then wandering around the room, talking to others, doing handstands, reading books, yawning huge uncovered ones, sneezing, loudly coughing to get attention, kicking desks, pushing sharp pencils into people, asking for a drink of water, and their favorite, `can I go to the bathroom now?'
During those years of school, of parent-teacher conferences, of activities, no teacher or parent, no one, ever reported poor sportsmanship or bullying behavior from Eric or Loren.
Both were a nuisance from time to time, like every day; their teachers went home thinking they earned their salary every day. I am sure that they also appreciated kids who liked to learn and were good at it.
Church school was, I think, the catalyst that changed these kid's ideas about how useful they could be to the world. The advantages of honesty, loyalty, integrity, justice, and honor were taught every day... and the disadvantages of the opposite courses of action demonstrated.
They both found a reason to change themselves there.
The twins were all about advantages.
Eric and Loren grew up in church school playing piano and violin, respectively, actually liked those instruments, and their repertoire was from the classical, baroque and romantic periods. Neither showed enough early aptitude or interest in finance or money for this dad to be comfortable, but life wasn't over for them yet.
They weren't too interested in art until sometime in high school. The art teacher was, they thought, a hottie and two girls in the class with long hair and figures were more than interested in the twins.
They were making some kind of sculpture and our two boys, hormonally men now, decided to model their plaster of paris mixed with vermiculite blocks into reproductions of the girl's, um, figures anyway. Not the faces so much. Think teen Picasso twins, sort of.
Money didn't interest either in the least. They got an allowance, which amounted to a dollar a day for however old they were. Eight years old got eight dollars a day. Of every eight dollars, eighty cents went to tithe and another forty cents went to offering for the poor for a total of fifteen per cent of income.
Calculating this was interesting for five minutes, but to save for anything they wanted was boring. They had zero patience for saving and wouldn't do it.
They liked to take their money and go to the same little corner store where we found them. That was familiar, even though security had to go with them. The Korean guy got old and sold out.
Not to worry, the new owner from Ecuador had two new very good customers for peppermint ice cream and sometimes brought a crowd, security and their dads and sometimes their grandmothers. The kids would dance around and tell anyone who would listen that they knew this place from somewhere and then the story morphed into we were born here' and then I think we owned this place once'.