The Rovings' Family

On an early evening in late October, the Rovings family home had been delivered of its stale air by the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Olivia “Liv” Rovings, with the strategic opening of certain windows that permitted a fresh breeze to channel through. Other windows didn’t seem to have the same “breath” which the home needed and which, whether consciously or not to the other residents, had an enlivened effect. Not that this was a daily routine or even a “it’s just absolutely gorgeous out” ceremony but was an action that one could equate to the disposal of worked in sweaty socks. Liv would tire of the stuffiness and simply proceed to open the veins that circulate the house.

She stood by the fourth opened window and took a deep breath. She checked her phone for the time, amongst other things, and moved toward the direction of the kitchen with self-assured steps, as if all the world really needed to obtain eternal peace was some open windows.

In the kitchen she saw her husband adjusting his apron, cucumbers and carrots sliced evenly on a cutting board. What she did not notice was his tense nerves that betrayed him when she entered the room and his fumbling fingers behind his back slipped loose of one string. These micro faults, though, never escaped his consciousness and he forced, mangled the strings into a tight knot. He smiled up to her as a correction and said, “I was thinking hun…” and left a small fragment of silence after to show importance. He began again, “I was thinking that maybe it isn’t too bad he’s back…it’s not for everyone yah know…”

Liv had reached the end of the counter where a bluetooth speaker had been playing and, against her better wishes, did not push it off but instead turned and looked once more at the cutting board, “No onions tonight.”

“Right” he replied and after increasing the tempo of carrot cutting continued, “It just seems he needs some time to think things over. After all I never-”

“Washed your hands, yes?” she interrupted, looking critically at them.

He nearly missed slicing the tip of his forefinger, “I never went to college-”

“I know”

“-and well, you see, well, some things yah know…just aren’t for everybody” he finished saying feeling rather triumphant, and not because of some elaborate testimony which could sway each juror unequivocally in his favor, lord knows the jury and judge could be bias, but because he had propped open merely a crack into the windows of his being and it seemed not a single fly would get in.

He glanced at her over the stove as she stirred pasta sauce and went back confidently to slicing a head of lettuce.

“He needs education” was her short reply and after sampling the sauce added, “Too much pepper.”

A sharp crunch of blade split more lettuce, “It’s just fine.”

“No need for attitude Tim. No need at all.” She replaced the pot lid and took a swift glance at her phone. Disappointed, or rather confused, she shoved it back into her pants and turned her full attention toward her husband with a deep breath, “Now-” she exhaled with half her reserve, “We talked this over long before he was even enrolled. He needs college. He will get an education. He’s smart and it needs to be directed well.”

“Sure sure but-”

“He hasn’t the opportunities that you had dear. Gracious…not everyone gets handed a business from their father and then lets it go to—” and she waved away an imaginary gnat as the silence hung heavy and thick in the air.

He lifted his head and gave her an even, bland, isn’t-life-just-lovely smile as she was retrieving dishes from the cupboard, “Just three plates. He’s already ate.”

“Eaten” Liv corrected and setting the table continued, “He’s always seemed to pick on people he deemed stupid and venerates those old white men long dead. Ghosts. His heroes are ghosts and it’s making him a ghost to this world.”

Tim mixing the veggies in a large bowl replied, “History has its place, no? What we fail to learn from history-”

“Spare me the platitudes.”

“At least he has passion. It’s admirable. Look around at his generation…where is their passion? Pulled left and right, spread thin. They’re just one smartphone alert from delving deep into anything.” Tim said and looked over to find Liv staring expressionless at him. “Don’t pretend” she rebutted, “that you understand him or their generation. While he is here he will begin thinking of his next college of choice. And quickly. God knows he has many. What's important is that he finds an avenue to use that brain of his. I didn’t raise him to join a fraternity of dead poets and mystics and what have you.” She shook her head clear of a future where her son turned into a good-for-nothing, dwelling in some rented attic room, covered loosely by a holey blanket dangling closely to an open candle flame, no furniture, etc. etc.

A gentle hum vibrated and with another swift look she glanced at the screen. The faintest of smiles formed at the corner of her lips.

Tim, noticing, asked, “Dawn almost here?”

Liv came back from reverie, “What’s that? Oh, yes. Be here any minute I’m sure.”

Dawn felt something was up. She knew that her beloved younger brother was back from college (and by “back” her parents really meant something akin to a timid 15th century world traveler who, after experiencing extreme foreign stimulus and perhaps contracting some island disease, has returned to recuperate from illness and get his bearings straight.) How she happened to be born into this family would often consume her thinking growing up. But, as it happens with a very fortunate few, she had herself an experience more real than real (she couldn’t articulate it any better, after all, she’s not her brother) and from that moment moving forward she took on life as one does after, say, a fulfilling meal and a walk through a garden where the last strands of sunlight give foliage a translucent glow. Sure, there lurks predators ready to prey as those last golden rays quit the scene, she knew this, but somehow within her, which she did not argue with, she had that glow given to light up and lead until, as sure as the sun rises, the sun rises.

Three raps were heard against the front door. Tim, drying his hands, replaced the towel and made his way to receive the visitor.

“Knock and it shall be opened.” He greeted Dawn and smiled lovingly, achingly, with those slightest of inside jokes that could make their children cringe but now are missed if not spoken.

“Hey Dad” she said and they embraced.

As they walked past the living room toward the kitchen she noticed billowing curtains and where, perhaps because of the curtains, a framed photograph of her parents from their courting days laid faced down. Dawn rerouted to stand up the frame (and also, maybe unconsciously, to look deeply into a more innocent time) but was intercepted by her mothers entrance, “There’s my holy daughter”. Liv said welcoming and they two embraced, a brief wooden hug.

“How are you mother?” she asked as they took each other in.

“Have you spoken with your brother?” Liv answered with a question and continued, “He’s impossible. Just impossible. Been upstairs ever since he got back. Have you spoken?”

Dawn said she hadn’t, that she had been busy, and that, along with finding new residence, had been in somewhat of a funky mood as of late. As they entered the kitchen her father asked, “New residence? Have you left the cloister? Everything ok dear?”

Dawn took his hand, “I’m fine. Much better now.” Her eyes sparkled with honesty. Her parents waited and watched. Dawn continued, “It wasn’t my calling…I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find any other way to explain my-”

Tim squeezed Dawns’ hand just perceptibly enough to assure his daughter that, not only does it not matter if he understands or not, but that he is there for her.

Dawn remained in silent correspondence with her father, the small unspoken moments which the most elegantly and poetically minded prose are but candles to a star.

Although Liv, across the island facing Dawns’ back, tried to present her words in a sympathetic vein, they came out with that slight edge of hostility, if not accusation, “So what will you do now dear?”

Dawn matter-of-factly replied, “I will help finish getting dinner ready.”

Liv, too charmed to refute or inquire further, nodded as Dawn turned back to her father. They, the Rovings’ family minus one, went about finishing up preperations. A small breeze went rocking the kitchen blinds into a tapping rhythm against the cill. The last rays of sunlight illuminated a plume of steam clouding up from the draining spaghetti noodles.

Not a sound was ever heard upstairs.

During dinner Tim and Liv informed their daughter of her brothers’ recent return and the events that preceded it. She was surprised and was not surprised. She could be bewildered by him and being bewildered now was, paradoxically, quite normal. Her mothers’ intensity of concern while informing, albeit vitriol tinged, would be interrupted via the phone (Dawn counted three mid-sentence cutoffs) and her father seemed to be not as critical or despondent but (Dawn was absolutely sure of this) she saw him smile during Liv’s polemic, hidden as it was, and his eyes emitted a certain mischievous victory. Liv again pleaded to Dawn to act as their diplomat, bonding the fractured continents of Downstairs and Upstairs.

“You have that something Dawn, who knows from where.” Liv said, or rather confessed, “It’s not from us. Not from me.” Liv completed and looked away discouraged, very discouraged apparently, and a flash of memory hit Dawns’ mind of this stage actor going above and beyond to reach that attendee in the upper balcony-last row-seat 28.

“Do you remember-” Tim addressed Dawn suddenly, “-when you were, I’d say about 8 years old, and Sam and yourself had that lemonade stand and that one boy, what was his name-”

“Adam Orkins” Liv declared flatly.

“Yes, when Adam came up and drank 3 full size cups of the lemonade without paying simply to mock you and Sam?”

“About 6 lifetimes ago if I had to guess.” Dawn answered with a smile but not of total recall.

“Do you remember what you did? Well, you never lost your cool. You said to Adam ‘Would you like more? You must be really thirsty!’ and then you poured him another and applied one of those little Flintstone bandages on his cut elbow that he didn’t even notice!” Tim laughed and beamed with pride, “The boy was so taken aback, as if gravity itself was reversed, that he thanked you and willingly began working for you, biking to the store for more lemons and spreading the word over town as he went.”

Liv began clearing the table and in this opportune moment said, “Just see how he is. He can be so cryptic but with you he speaks plainly-” and walking away repeated, to herself it seemed, “Certainly not from me.”

Dawn agreed she’d go Upstairs right after helping clean up. A slight protest arose from Liv but was easily drowned by the swift and obligatory movements of service Dawn could exemplify in times of, let’s say, when a person has two free hands and hates to see them go to waste or led into temptation by the plagues of indifference and idleness.

She knocked and there was no answer. Dawn spoke into the door, “Aiden, I’m coming in-” and again, no answer.

In his room Aiden had been sitting watching a fly repeatedly bang its winged body against a window pane until a gentle current of air from behind caught the fly and channeled it through, out and up, of the smallest of window openings. He turned to the sound of his door opening and rather laconically, but not altogether without warmth, said, “Hey Dawn.” His sister entered and, rather than scope his surroundings for that instantaneous absorption of clues which reveal present character (which we will not necessarily go into) she kept her gaze on him, taking in his mood, feeling for how deep in the mire her younger brother was steeped. She sat on the edge of his bed facing him with a face empty of any presuppositions. He flicked a rapid glance at her and went back to staring out the window where the fly had found its freedom.

“You’ve left the monastery haven’t you?” He asked, breaking the silence, with rusty vocal chords.

“Yes.”

He nodded and watched a leaf, weak of stem and ripe for flight, be gustily torn from a branch.

“You’ve left university for good?” she asked.

He stood up and walked to the furthest side of the room. Dawn watched him as he looked absently at loaded bookshelves as if they were eroded tombstones in a cemetery which he knew not a single person. His hand went up and leaned against them in support but immediately recoiled away when the bookshelf itself rocked with unsteady grounding.

Dawn commented, “Things’ never been stable…”

“I guess they told you everything huh?” Aiden asked rhetorically, approaching the window.

“They mentioned the outburst in class…”

“Outburst-”Aiden scoffed.

Dawn asked, “What is everything?”

“Outburst” he repeated, “That’s good. A person disagrees with insanity and it's an outburst.”

“They didn’t say much more else Aiden and-”

“And they sent you up here to ‘figure me out’…”

Dawn remained silent and this silence reigned superior.

“It’s a big ol’ scam, Dawn. Everything is…and college is just one of the carrots dangling from the stick. Jesus, you know this. You’ve left the monastery obviously...Did God greet you after performing your duties and rites? All those months, did He come? Carrot and stick. We’ve all been duped to some degree…I’ll tell you what happened-” He faced her from across the room and the twilight shone gray and disquietly on him, “I stood up in the middle of a lecture (a bullshit self serving patting-myself-on-the-back-diatribe-against-western-culture kinda lecture) and walked down the stairs to the podium the professors laptop was on, and then…then I flipped the whole thing over. Just flipped it. Shit went everywhere. The entire room hissed me out the door…the smug look on the professor as I walked past him...Christ Dawn, I should’ve left day one. No. Actually, I should’ve gone to every single goddamn room in that institution on day one and flipped over all their podiums, their pul-pits.”

Dawns’ eyes never left his. Unlike the majority of people of whom Aiden unleashed his criticisms upon, Dawn absorbed her brothers’ rant, hearing the words, listening between them, going into his heart and there, feeling for the pulse that fueled his speech.

Aiden, relievingly heard, though not without pain, continued, “Pulpits... There's a new religious adversary brewing against your Christianity Dawn. You’ve felt it right… They got all the fixins’. Inherent guilt, confessional platforms, a clergy to forgive your innate sins…which are never alleviated…because wah-lah! They’re inherent! ‘We welcome all…but first—’. Jesus…”

He finished and sat down at his desk, feeling the odd mixture of depleted and ramped up, and began scribbling imaginary haphazard lines with his forefinger on the oak desktop.

Staring blankly through the desk, he began again yet with a subdued, almost tranquil tone, “They’ve capitalized on the human condition. Convince them of their error, real or imagined, offer the solution that brandishes goodwill and charity as to have the error pardoned, and with iron allegiance (and this is what really keeps them in the grace of innocence) scold and cast out those evil ones who’ve, in their disobedient willpower, think in any other way, being morally bankrupt and without conscience. It's the psychological Inquisition. It’s so sad Dawn..to see the other students swallow any wafer crumb slipped from the silver plated lips of those high priests of knowledge and wisdom...”

He quickly stood up again, nearly jumped, took a huge breath and exhaled, “Bankrupt. I see nothing but bankrupt souls slogging along, reaching for anything, oh anything, to convince themselves of the one thing that perhaps this world can never give them, tangled in the mesh of some ideology (as you’ll see them grapple and claw through if you ask just a few simple questions) ready to destroy any and all persons or programs which have what they do not possess…jealous, cruel, bewitched and crazed, full of hate, full of malice…and because of one thing— because they’ve never known the feeling of unconditional love. Or perhaps they had felt it once, let’s go with that, well, all else pales in comparison does it not? And instead of surrendering to this mightiest of forces, instead of being grateful for a sliver of light in perpetual darkness, instead of taking courage and offering the gift so that others may know it also therefore extending its presence, they look back, despising that fragment of light which has now abandoned them, growing accustomed to the dark, growing to love the dark, rivals of the light, envious then despising of the sincere happiness they witness throughout the day for it reminds them of their own cowardliness, their own lack of spine, and born is a vendetta, yes, a vendetta, to wage war against anything that resembles that moment when they thought themselves abandoned.”

It had become quite dark in Aidens’ room by this time and as he looked over discovered Dawn had left her place on the edge of the bed.

The room suddenly illuminated from Aidens nightstand and Dawn, returning to her seat, had an odd smile that did not resonate well with Aiden.

“What?” he demanded.

Dawn, looking down for recollection, began reciting,

“We as children go

Scrambling for our little ball

In a leased sandpit

Eyeing sidley

Any shuffle or noise

Ready to wail

If plaything dispossessed

Or new toy withheld

Though when the Bell rings

Immediate the drama drops

With memory into Vacancy.”

“You’re gonna throw juvenile poetry at me huh?” Aiden said self-deprecatingly.

Dawn looked up and beamed into his eyes, “I love it.”

Aiden looked away, cooly, and flicked a ball of paper trash at the window.

“My favorite of yours was this one though-”

Aiden tried to remain stoic in his coolness but if one had eyes to see, they’d notice his ears literally perk up.

Dawn went on,

“To follow one’s heart

Is the lone sailor at sea

Spectators ashore whistle or whine

Apprehensively

As the jarring withdrawal

Leaves them just blue to see

Moored ships of wake induced

Toward eternity.”

“Just beautiful.” Dawn said, sitting in peaceful repose.

Aiden remained silent and stared out into the night that revealed only silhouettes of stripped branches and a moon rising, golden and sad. Many thoughts flashed through his mind, each clamoring for admittance to prime real estate, and as it so happens when thoughts, charged by passion and emotion, battle one another in rapid fire succession, a canceling of all thought proceeded and he looked flatly at himself, ghostly reflected, in the dark mirrored window.

Staring at his phantom he asked, “You know Mom is cheating on Dad right?”

Dawn nodded, as if in confirmation to herself.

“And Dad,” Aiden continued, “What a coward…”

Dawn waited.

“I know he knows what she is doing. And he takes it. Afraid of her. He knows she is good friends with McCluster, Davis, & Wiesson…they’d rip away everything from him if he tried to divorce. ‘Everything’...isn’t that a laugh…”

Just then the sound of a soft thud landed outside of Aidens bedroom. He quickly got up, opened the door slyly, and on investigating saw a hallway table lamp had fallen over. He looked left, then right, made a note to himself, and closed the door, loudly.

He fell back into his seat, “And now she’s snooping around, Jesus…and if she’s not snooping around then she’s doing this ‘best-mom-in-the-world’ act so I don’t let Dad know what he already fucking knows but won’t act upon…”

The room fell quiet for several moments, Aiden sufficiently drained of speech and Dawn looking down, thoughtful and transported.

Aiden, noticing her pensive demeanor, asked, “Why’d you leave the monastery?”

“Do you remember,” Dawn began, looking up from reverie with a grin, “when you were about 5 and you helped me and Sam with the lemonade stand? Do you remember that?”

Aiden shook his head.

“We had that stand to help fundraise for the Girl Scouts-”

“The year Mom was…away?” Aiden asked.

“Yeah…and we had to reach a certain amount in lemonade sales to win for our troop. Funny cause I don’t even remember what the prize was. Anyway, Dad brought up the story earlier but he muddled the part where - remember Adam Orkins?”

“That kid…”

“Well Dad thought Adam was transformed that one day by me giving him a bandage, a Flintstones bandage apparently, for his elbow…but I remember it differently. All I did was give him lemonade when he was mocking me and Sam. It was you who came up during this and bandaged him.”

Aiden looked over with furrowed eyebrows.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Dawn asked.

Aiden looked away, repulsed.

“You had just got that new gaming system, X-Station or somethin, and you’d been asking about it for months but, instead of playing it that day, you wanted to watch over us. ‘Stand guard’ I remember you saying.” Dawn threw up her right hand in salute and winked.

The tiniest of smirks crossed Aidens’ face, “How do you remember that?”

“How do you remember obscure poetry from 19th century Transcendentalists or how the political atmosphere in Shakespeares’ London shaped the writing of Macbeth?”

Aiden found no answer.

They looked at each other and grinned.

As silently as possible, Mr. Rovings had made his way downstairs, avoiding the creaking center of steps, and reaching the landing, peered out of the front door window. He watched his wife pull out of the driveway, haphazardly applying lipstick, her neck craned dangerously for rear view mirror precision.

His head dropped.

He walked sullenly, heavy and slow, toward the garage door. He thought over his sons’ recent words. God he’s right. I am a coward. Always been. My Dad knew it. Only thing he did know. How he trusted me with the family business—

A coward…my son knows it. Liv knows it, despises me. Dawn ignores it. I am nothing. Guess I always was…always was…

He then went into the garage and closed the door quietly, finally.

In his room Aiden thought he’d heard more activity right outside the door and checked again. The lamp was still on the floor—all was the same. He stuck his head outside the door frame somewhat to hear clearer and could have sworn he heard the garage car start up. He shrugged it off and closed the door.

As Aiden sat down at his desk, Dawn looked him over and, noticing this, he chuckled in honest good cheer, “What is it?” he asked.

All she could do was beam at him.

She then stood up and, approaching without a sound, wrapped her arms around him from behind and squeezed tightly, cheeks pressed together. Aiden took his arms and held hers to his chest.

With Dawn letting go Aiden sensed the pang of loss coming, “You leaving?” he asked.

Before she could answer, Aiden asked once again, “Why’d you leave the monastery?”

Dawns’ face became thoughtful as she looked out into the night, still bare branches and the golden moon, a farmhouse silo in the distance with a crown shining silver, wisps of stratus clouds rushing across the threshold between earth and space, stars appearing to twinkle Morse code throughout the cosmos, their messages reaching the iris, dead or alive.

Aiden said mildly, “I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t find God there—or that it was a waste of time or—”

“It’s okay Aiden.” Dawn said, “It’s okay.”

She remained looking outside until her focus shifted to the foreground and her ghostly reflection stared at her, through her.

“I never had to search for God, Aiden. He found me before I even knew there was a loss. I went into the monastery for…clarification, I think. But it’s more than that also. The sufferings of this world to the sensitive, even tiny ones, are pinpricks which bloodlet the soul. Perhaps especially the tiny ones, for the sensitive type discovers it’s by the smallest of these sufferings by which our monstrous tragedies are built. I simply couldn’t take it anymore, my heart punished daily by the injustice, by the inequality, even by the pained desperation that seemed to be most consistent in everyone I met…”

Dawn paused and her brother sat there honestly absorbed.

She continued, “If one was gifted an unlimited treasure of which only they could see, should they share and let others know? Could they? My answer was yes, very much yes. He said yes. But oh, I did not have the strength or faith that He had. I nearly collapsed in my struggles to share with neighbors. Was hated and ridiculed and fell ill for a while. I needed time to…I don’t know…to listen, I think. I couldn’t hear anymore—”

Dawn paused and appeared to be struggling to fight back tears.

She went on, “And so I thought to myself, ‘My treasure my treasure, why have you deserted me?’ It scared me to death. I hid from people. I hid from myself. I couldn’t see a reason to…love anyone, anymore. It was then I decided to go into the monastery, to hear again. ‘Let me hear again, remind me of the treasure I failed to share!’ This I screamed in my heart toward God. And you know what—” she looked over with a smile etched from trials, “eventually the screaming stopped. I was emptied. Silence filled me. I listened and I heard. I looked about my cloister and right there, right there Aiden, right in front of me, everywhere, laid the treasure. My heart exploded in joy! In everything, in everyone, there was the treasure! I could see again! I fell to the floor in tears and when I raised myself, I let the Sisters know that I had to leave—”

Aiden waited. One could hear eyes blink.

Dawn turned from the window and faced him, “Because I need to be out here. Because I need to ‘stand guard’...you never know who might need a Flintstones bandage.”

She then made her way to the door but stopped, turned, and raised her right hand in salute.

Aiden stood from his chair, back straight, and saluted his older sister.

After a few static, pregnant moments, they convulsed into laughter.

“See you soon?” Aiden asked as she opened the door.

“I’ll be around.” Dawn replied and stepped out of the room.

Going down the stairs Dawn heard the hum of an idle car in the garage and to her right, curtains blew wildly, wrapping around lamp fixtures and photo frames, a candle precariously lit flickering nearby. She closed the living room windows and looked out where strong winds whipped a few solitary leaves down the street. Clouds covered the moon and darkened the night land. A shiver went up her spine and a sharp intake of breath arrested her.

After replacing the hallway lamp, Aiden went back to his room and flicked on more lights. Gold lettering from the book bindings glinted and caught his eye. He took a novel down, thumbed through the pages, not reading words but with a detached, softened vision, let the pages slowly fan from front to back. Replacing the book sent the unsteady shelf rocking, as usual, and so he set about readjusting the weight, placing the thicker volumes on the bottom. Underneath the shelf he spotted thick dust and with a more keen eye saw much of his room that needed cleaning. A fly buzzed by his face and he watched it go toward the window, banging its body haphazardly.

It was right after guiding the fly out of the open window that Aiden heard his name screamed from below.