So, there was this boy... {Chapter 2: The Story Remains the Same...}
Chapter 2: The story remains the same...
The first 40 minutes of the ride to the radio station were uneventful, mostly vocal warm-ups and silent reflection. I listened to voicemail on my phone and plugged what may or may not end up being pertinent information into it and ran over everything the road manager had planned for the day. I was ostensibly hired to be their assistant, but really I was just a glorified gopher and laundry lady. I made sure they showed up where they were supposed to be as close to on time as humanly possible, I checked to see if they needed anything, I dressed them in clean clothes and had more fun than I thought one human being was capable of having.
I was living a life I had never imagined.
I found myself wondering how I ended up here. While it would seem like a straight shot from birth to that moment in a van, it wasn’t. I closed my eyes and tried to trace the trajectory and found that I could pinpoint the moment everything changed. Losing Thad. It always came back to that. According to Thad, I was meant for greater and different things.
Thad made grand and exhaustive plans about our future; he would be a doctor and Olympic athlete and I would be a lawyer and award winning author. We would buy houses that were next door to each other as he discovered the cure for cancer and I won the Noble prize for Literature for my long-winded and yet, endlessly entertaining history of the world. We even knew which houses we were going to buy. He was going to marry a hometown girl who would give him many strong and handsome children. I was never going to get married, because no one was good enough for me.
We grew up in the Shelby Hills neighborhood of East Nashville; our next door neighbors were the Mulligan family. My parents had been lifelong friends with Ruby and Patrick Mulligan. They had been the best man and maid/matron of honor at each others weddings, which were only two weeks apart. In fact, at one point, they were going to have a double wedding. But cooler heads prevailed. They had attended University of Tennessee together and had lived in the same apartment complex. My father had gone on to medical school and my mother went to law school in Utah. And as far as I knew that was the only time in my Mothers life that Patty Mulligan wasn’t her next door neighbor.
So, when it came time to start a family, it only makes sense that both families started at almost the exact same time. Finneas was precisely four months younger than Thad and I. And three years later Declan joined the clan. From the word go, we were tight. When Jarrod’s family bought the house on the other side, it took us about an hour to let him in the group. The four of us were basically a gang, terrorizing the neighborhood with our games of full-body-tackle tag, blood soccer, hiding frogs in mailboxes and filling the choir box with ants. We weren’t actually mean or destructive, but we were a force to be reckoned with; we rode our bikes like the kings and queen we thought we were.
Then our tight little group was shaken up.
Or well, it seemed like it was. Seamus moved in with the Mulligans full time. Seamus was their cousin; he was this shy, little, waif-like creature. Seamus was born when he mother was only 14 years old; at first, she said she wanted to have an abortion, but her catholic family was horrified by that idea and offered to help her if she kept it. So really, Sam was always around because Finn and Dec’s mother, Ruby, watched him while she went to school. But he wasn’t always around and he was so little compared to the rest of us he was easy to ignore.
My memories of him before he moved in with Ruby and Patrick are of a bedraggled child with unruly blond hair that constant fell into his eyes. His eyes had the haunted, too-big look of a refugee and were always red-rimmed and runny. They were startling blue amongst all of us with our dark muddy eyes. He flinched at loud noises and never cried even when he was really hurt. He often had weird black and blue marks, but didn’t we all? We were very rough and tumble kids that didn’t think anything of jumping out of trees or off of barns; we even played a strange version of Chicken on our bikes. Bike Chicken was such a rough game, I am still shocked that there was only one broken bone in all the years we played it. We didn’t shy away from things just because they were dangerous or held the possibility of one of us getting really hurt. Although, before he moved in with Finn and Dec, he never took part in our more aggressive games. Yet, he was still just as beat up as us. His clothes were either too big or too small, they never actually fit him. And if I would have been a more observant child, I would have realized that they were clothes that had once belonged to Finn or Dec or Thad or even Jarrod.
Around the time I was nine, Seamus came to live with Patrick and Ruby fulltime. Again, if I had been at all interested in something outside of myself, I would have learned that his mother had been sent away to get better. As a child, I would never have been told that Emma had been sent away to rehab to try and sober up from a pretty serious drug addiction. I would not have been told that his mother had been “entertaining” men for money. I would never have been let in on the secret that she had almost been beaten to death in front of Seamus. However, I was told to be kind to Seamus and to not ask a lot of questions about how his arm was broken. Soon after he moved in next door, I remember my mother coming out to watch us play. This in and of itself was noteworthy, because she was always too busy. She stood with one hand on her hip and her other shading her eyes. She watched as the five of us ran around the yard. Sam had been “it” for a very long time, due to the fact that the rest of us easily outran him. He was small and frail and got easily winded. Finally, she called us in for dinner. As we were walking up the steps into the kitchen, she shook her head sadly and with tears in her eyes said “he is so beautiful. It’s a tragedy how broken he will grow up to be.”
As our family ate dinner that night, I remember my mother being very distant and quiet. As we finished up our meal, my mother removed her glasses and looked at both Thad and I very sternly. “I want both of your to promise me something.” We both nodded mutely. “I want you both to promise to be kind to Seamus.”
“Your mother is right,” my father began his voice filling the room with authority. He was so rarely there that his being there was really resonant. “You need to make sure that you are nice to him. He has had a hard life up until now and I want you to promise me that you will not add to it.”
I remember Thad cocking his head a little and his eyes looking far away. He was thinking deeply about something, his dark brown eyes so serious and so foreign. “You’re right Dad; he does need us to be nice to him.”
I think if I had been a more sensitive child, I would have seen him for the sad, beautiful creature he was. But as an eight year old girl sure of herself and her place in the universe, I saw him completely differently. I saw him as a skinny nuisance, but Thad saw him for what he was. Somehow, Thad could see him as sad and broken. From that day forward, Thad was nicer to him than any of the rest of us. Sometimes, he would let him catch him while playing tag and he never preyed on him. He really was the best of us.
For the first year he lived next door, the rest of us still saw him as the skinny, little waif and a nuisance. In fact, I remember thinking he was just dumb because he couldn’t ride a bike yet. So one day, the boys and I took off for Shelby Park at top speed not caring or worrying about how Sam was going to get to the soccer fields for another game of blood soccer. I only realized that Thad wasn’t with us as we decided what the soccer goals were going to be. Still, I wasn’t all that concerned about it because I knew he’d show up eventually. About fifteen minutes into the game, Thad and a beaming Sam came rolling up to where we were playing. He had ridden his bike the whole way without falling once and Thad was the only one of us good enough to actually help.
At some point, he became the same as the rest of us, riding his bike like a maniac, able to dodge the person who was “it,” jumping out of the ridiculously high swings. He became stronger and healthier, his face filled in and soon, he could almost run around the soccer field as fast as me, almost. In fact, once he started getting the love, attention and regular meals the rest of us always had, he not only caught up, but was soon taller than Declan who was six months older than him.
“Um, Cleo,” Seamus said quietly as I watched a very dark city fly by the window of the van. I looked out the window and wondered exactly where we were. By the looks of the city, it seemed like Texas. “Why are you wearing a pair of my boxers?”
“What? I’m not wearing your boxers.” I said pulling the sweater as far over the deep blue, silky boxers as possible. Knowing that my lie would eventually be found out, but I was going to try my hardest not to give in. “These are my shorts...”
“So, when did your shorts get a fly without a zipper?” Seamus said pointing to the fly, which was gaping open and showing a patch of lime green panty. “Those are definitely my boxers! They’re the new boxers we bought in New York. Remember? We stayed in the Trump Plaza and you made a comment on how tacky the lobby is and how it was a shining example of what happens when white trash gets a lot of money, in front of his daughter?”
“Um... Oops!” I said remembering how Ivanka had stared down her nose at me. It was just awful. Declan could barely contain his laughter until we got into the van. I think Teagan, the tour manager actually sent an apology card to her. Yet another prime example of me putting my foot in my mouth.
“And aren’t those the underwear Jarrod gave you for your last birthday? The very underwear you swore you’d never wear?”
“Shh!! Not everyone in the van needs to know that, especially Dec.” I whispered directly into his ear.
“Don’t you think he’ll figure it out eventually?” Seamus whispered back. His breath was warm on my neck. He smelled of a combination of cologne, Colgate and coffee, a smell I will always associate with him. “Don’t you think when we are in a well lit room, both he and Finn will notice?”
“I don’t know, you guys are pretty oblivious...” I said. I should have changed, if Seamus was making this big a deal out of it, I could only imagine what Declan’s reaction would be. Dec lived to make my life a living hell, any chance he had to tease me was seized and wrung dry. “I mean, you three hardly even notice my existence let alone my appearance.”
“Well, I’ll bet that changes now that Dec’s seen you naked.” Seamus said raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at my body. I could feel my cheeks flushing. “Actually, I was never even positive you had breasts until today. Well let me take that back, I always knew you had breasts. But now I’ve been faced with their reality.”
“That is gross.” I was not entirely comfortable with him commenting on my body. Really, I wasn’t comfortable with any of them seeing me in the altogether, but especially Seamus. For whatever reason. “Hey, you’re my boss; I could sue you for sexual harassment.”
“Hey, I just call them as I see them.” Seamus said looking at me barely containing his laughter. He reached out and pulled me into a close, but rare hug. He is one of those amazing creatures who hugs with his whole body. And his hugs while rare are something I always looked forward to receiving. “And boy, did I see them.”
“Just shut up!” I said as the driver pulled up in front of a boring, featureless building. This building looked so much like all the other buildings we had seen so far this tour. I seriously wondered what city we were in; it can be bothersome to have to ask the DJ what city it was. They always looked at me as if I were insane when I asked, “just to clarify, what city is this exactly?” As soon as the van turned into the parking lot, the screaming began.
There is a note only a teenage girl can hit and about two hundred girls hit it at exactly the same moment. I noticed all three of the guys jump. You might think they would be used to this by now. But, really, there is no way to prepare for the sheer volume of their voices. Declan stubbornly turned his face away from where the girls were jumping up and down hoping their heroes would notice them. Finneas quietly dropped his face in his hands and began to rub his temples. I could tell that Finneas was once again developing one of his headaches. And Sam was quietly cursing as he looked at the spot on the front of his shirt where his coffee spilled when he jumped. Good thing I carried a spare shirt for him for occasions such as this. I mean, it’s as if he loves coffee so much he has to wear it. I’d bought him at least five spill-proof mugs since the beginning of this tour and much like his toothbrush, he cannot seem to keep track of them.
“Oh goody! The scream squad has already arrived.” Declan sneered. I have to be honest, they all loved the fans. They were the reason they could do any of this at all. And one on one, the fans were generally calm and manageable. There was a lot less crying in the Meet and Greets, but dang, when that mob mentality took over... There is something to be said for throat splitting screams at 6:00 am. All three of them were bothered by the hordes of screaming girls; I wanted to explain that they would get more time with them, they would be willing to sign more autographs, take more pictures, if only they wouldn’t scream. Truthfully, Declan was the only one who looked on them with contempt and that was only when the screaming came at such an early hour of the morning. “I don’t feel like having my hair pulled this morning.”
“Dec, be nice.” Finneas said from behind his hands. “If they weren’t here, then we wouldn’t be here. But my lord, do they have to be so loud at this hour of the morning, I mean, the sun isn’t all the way up...”
“Cleo, get on the phone,” Seamus said, pulling on the clean shirt I had just handed him over the shirt with the coffee stain. “See if there’s a back door, maybe a service elevator from the parking terrace...”
I was way ahead of him. I’d already pulled up the appearance information on my phone and had dialed the promotion director’s number. “Okay, we’ll just do a quick pass through the parking lot, give the girls a little something... Then, we’ll pull around the south side of the building and into the parking lot. Go all the way to the back to the service elevator. Someone will be waiting for us there. Is that okay? Do you think you can smile for a few seconds Dec?”
“I suppose, if I have to.” Declan said sighing.
“Hey, if you need something to smile about just think about Cleo’s breasts.” Seamus said laughing. This comment earned him not only Finneas and Declan’s laughter, but also a very hard slug from me. From now on, I’m riding up front with the driver.
The first 40 minutes of the ride to the radio station were uneventful, mostly vocal warm-ups and silent reflection. I listened to voicemail on my phone and plugged what may or may not end up being pertinent information into it and ran over everything the road manager had planned for the day. I was ostensibly hired to be their assistant, but really I was just a glorified gopher and laundry lady. I made sure they showed up where they were supposed to be as close to on time as humanly possible, I checked to see if they needed anything, I dressed them in clean clothes and had more fun than I thought one human being was capable of having.
I was living a life I had never imagined.
I found myself wondering how I ended up here. While it would seem like a straight shot from birth to that moment in a van, it wasn’t. I closed my eyes and tried to trace the trajectory and found that I could pinpoint the moment everything changed. Losing Thad. It always came back to that. According to Thad, I was meant for greater and different things.
Thad made grand and exhaustive plans about our future; he would be a doctor and Olympic athlete and I would be a lawyer and award winning author. We would buy houses that were next door to each other as he discovered the cure for cancer and I won the Noble prize for Literature for my long-winded and yet, endlessly entertaining history of the world. We even knew which houses we were going to buy. He was going to marry a hometown girl who would give him many strong and handsome children. I was never going to get married, because no one was good enough for me.
We grew up in the Shelby Hills neighborhood of East Nashville; our next door neighbors were the Mulligan family. My parents had been lifelong friends with Ruby and Patrick Mulligan. They had been the best man and maid/matron of honor at each others weddings, which were only two weeks apart. In fact, at one point, they were going to have a double wedding. But cooler heads prevailed. They had attended University of Tennessee together and had lived in the same apartment complex. My father had gone on to medical school and my mother went to law school in Utah. And as far as I knew that was the only time in my Mothers life that Patty Mulligan wasn’t her next door neighbor.
So, when it came time to start a family, it only makes sense that both families started at almost the exact same time. Finneas was precisely four months younger than Thad and I. And three years later Declan joined the clan. From the word go, we were tight. When Jarrod’s family bought the house on the other side, it took us about an hour to let him in the group. The four of us were basically a gang, terrorizing the neighborhood with our games of full-body-tackle tag, blood soccer, hiding frogs in mailboxes and filling the choir box with ants. We weren’t actually mean or destructive, but we were a force to be reckoned with; we rode our bikes like the kings and queen we thought we were.
Then our tight little group was shaken up.
Or well, it seemed like it was. Seamus moved in with the Mulligans full time. Seamus was their cousin; he was this shy, little, waif-like creature. Seamus was born when he mother was only 14 years old; at first, she said she wanted to have an abortion, but her catholic family was horrified by that idea and offered to help her if she kept it. So really, Sam was always around because Finn and Dec’s mother, Ruby, watched him while she went to school. But he wasn’t always around and he was so little compared to the rest of us he was easy to ignore.
My memories of him before he moved in with Ruby and Patrick are of a bedraggled child with unruly blond hair that constant fell into his eyes. His eyes had the haunted, too-big look of a refugee and were always red-rimmed and runny. They were startling blue amongst all of us with our dark muddy eyes. He flinched at loud noises and never cried even when he was really hurt. He often had weird black and blue marks, but didn’t we all? We were very rough and tumble kids that didn’t think anything of jumping out of trees or off of barns; we even played a strange version of Chicken on our bikes. Bike Chicken was such a rough game, I am still shocked that there was only one broken bone in all the years we played it. We didn’t shy away from things just because they were dangerous or held the possibility of one of us getting really hurt. Although, before he moved in with Finn and Dec, he never took part in our more aggressive games. Yet, he was still just as beat up as us. His clothes were either too big or too small, they never actually fit him. And if I would have been a more observant child, I would have realized that they were clothes that had once belonged to Finn or Dec or Thad or even Jarrod.
Around the time I was nine, Seamus came to live with Patrick and Ruby fulltime. Again, if I had been at all interested in something outside of myself, I would have learned that his mother had been sent away to get better. As a child, I would never have been told that Emma had been sent away to rehab to try and sober up from a pretty serious drug addiction. I would not have been told that his mother had been “entertaining” men for money. I would never have been let in on the secret that she had almost been beaten to death in front of Seamus. However, I was told to be kind to Seamus and to not ask a lot of questions about how his arm was broken. Soon after he moved in next door, I remember my mother coming out to watch us play. This in and of itself was noteworthy, because she was always too busy. She stood with one hand on her hip and her other shading her eyes. She watched as the five of us ran around the yard. Sam had been “it” for a very long time, due to the fact that the rest of us easily outran him. He was small and frail and got easily winded. Finally, she called us in for dinner. As we were walking up the steps into the kitchen, she shook her head sadly and with tears in her eyes said “he is so beautiful. It’s a tragedy how broken he will grow up to be.”
As our family ate dinner that night, I remember my mother being very distant and quiet. As we finished up our meal, my mother removed her glasses and looked at both Thad and I very sternly. “I want both of your to promise me something.” We both nodded mutely. “I want you both to promise to be kind to Seamus.”
“Your mother is right,” my father began his voice filling the room with authority. He was so rarely there that his being there was really resonant. “You need to make sure that you are nice to him. He has had a hard life up until now and I want you to promise me that you will not add to it.”
I remember Thad cocking his head a little and his eyes looking far away. He was thinking deeply about something, his dark brown eyes so serious and so foreign. “You’re right Dad; he does need us to be nice to him.”
I think if I had been a more sensitive child, I would have seen him for the sad, beautiful creature he was. But as an eight year old girl sure of herself and her place in the universe, I saw him completely differently. I saw him as a skinny nuisance, but Thad saw him for what he was. Somehow, Thad could see him as sad and broken. From that day forward, Thad was nicer to him than any of the rest of us. Sometimes, he would let him catch him while playing tag and he never preyed on him. He really was the best of us.
For the first year he lived next door, the rest of us still saw him as the skinny, little waif and a nuisance. In fact, I remember thinking he was just dumb because he couldn’t ride a bike yet. So one day, the boys and I took off for Shelby Park at top speed not caring or worrying about how Sam was going to get to the soccer fields for another game of blood soccer. I only realized that Thad wasn’t with us as we decided what the soccer goals were going to be. Still, I wasn’t all that concerned about it because I knew he’d show up eventually. About fifteen minutes into the game, Thad and a beaming Sam came rolling up to where we were playing. He had ridden his bike the whole way without falling once and Thad was the only one of us good enough to actually help.
At some point, he became the same as the rest of us, riding his bike like a maniac, able to dodge the person who was “it,” jumping out of the ridiculously high swings. He became stronger and healthier, his face filled in and soon, he could almost run around the soccer field as fast as me, almost. In fact, once he started getting the love, attention and regular meals the rest of us always had, he not only caught up, but was soon taller than Declan who was six months older than him.
“Um, Cleo,” Seamus said quietly as I watched a very dark city fly by the window of the van. I looked out the window and wondered exactly where we were. By the looks of the city, it seemed like Texas. “Why are you wearing a pair of my boxers?”
“What? I’m not wearing your boxers.” I said pulling the sweater as far over the deep blue, silky boxers as possible. Knowing that my lie would eventually be found out, but I was going to try my hardest not to give in. “These are my shorts...”
“So, when did your shorts get a fly without a zipper?” Seamus said pointing to the fly, which was gaping open and showing a patch of lime green panty. “Those are definitely my boxers! They’re the new boxers we bought in New York. Remember? We stayed in the Trump Plaza and you made a comment on how tacky the lobby is and how it was a shining example of what happens when white trash gets a lot of money, in front of his daughter?”
“Um... Oops!” I said remembering how Ivanka had stared down her nose at me. It was just awful. Declan could barely contain his laughter until we got into the van. I think Teagan, the tour manager actually sent an apology card to her. Yet another prime example of me putting my foot in my mouth.
“And aren’t those the underwear Jarrod gave you for your last birthday? The very underwear you swore you’d never wear?”
“Shh!! Not everyone in the van needs to know that, especially Dec.” I whispered directly into his ear.
“Don’t you think he’ll figure it out eventually?” Seamus whispered back. His breath was warm on my neck. He smelled of a combination of cologne, Colgate and coffee, a smell I will always associate with him. “Don’t you think when we are in a well lit room, both he and Finn will notice?”
“I don’t know, you guys are pretty oblivious...” I said. I should have changed, if Seamus was making this big a deal out of it, I could only imagine what Declan’s reaction would be. Dec lived to make my life a living hell, any chance he had to tease me was seized and wrung dry. “I mean, you three hardly even notice my existence let alone my appearance.”
“Well, I’ll bet that changes now that Dec’s seen you naked.” Seamus said raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at my body. I could feel my cheeks flushing. “Actually, I was never even positive you had breasts until today. Well let me take that back, I always knew you had breasts. But now I’ve been faced with their reality.”
“That is gross.” I was not entirely comfortable with him commenting on my body. Really, I wasn’t comfortable with any of them seeing me in the altogether, but especially Seamus. For whatever reason. “Hey, you’re my boss; I could sue you for sexual harassment.”
“Hey, I just call them as I see them.” Seamus said looking at me barely containing his laughter. He reached out and pulled me into a close, but rare hug. He is one of those amazing creatures who hugs with his whole body. And his hugs while rare are something I always looked forward to receiving. “And boy, did I see them.”
“Just shut up!” I said as the driver pulled up in front of a boring, featureless building. This building looked so much like all the other buildings we had seen so far this tour. I seriously wondered what city we were in; it can be bothersome to have to ask the DJ what city it was. They always looked at me as if I were insane when I asked, “just to clarify, what city is this exactly?” As soon as the van turned into the parking lot, the screaming began.
There is a note only a teenage girl can hit and about two hundred girls hit it at exactly the same moment. I noticed all three of the guys jump. You might think they would be used to this by now. But, really, there is no way to prepare for the sheer volume of their voices. Declan stubbornly turned his face away from where the girls were jumping up and down hoping their heroes would notice them. Finneas quietly dropped his face in his hands and began to rub his temples. I could tell that Finneas was once again developing one of his headaches. And Sam was quietly cursing as he looked at the spot on the front of his shirt where his coffee spilled when he jumped. Good thing I carried a spare shirt for him for occasions such as this. I mean, it’s as if he loves coffee so much he has to wear it. I’d bought him at least five spill-proof mugs since the beginning of this tour and much like his toothbrush, he cannot seem to keep track of them.
“Oh goody! The scream squad has already arrived.” Declan sneered. I have to be honest, they all loved the fans. They were the reason they could do any of this at all. And one on one, the fans were generally calm and manageable. There was a lot less crying in the Meet and Greets, but dang, when that mob mentality took over... There is something to be said for throat splitting screams at 6:00 am. All three of them were bothered by the hordes of screaming girls; I wanted to explain that they would get more time with them, they would be willing to sign more autographs, take more pictures, if only they wouldn’t scream. Truthfully, Declan was the only one who looked on them with contempt and that was only when the screaming came at such an early hour of the morning. “I don’t feel like having my hair pulled this morning.”
“Dec, be nice.” Finneas said from behind his hands. “If they weren’t here, then we wouldn’t be here. But my lord, do they have to be so loud at this hour of the morning, I mean, the sun isn’t all the way up...”
“Cleo, get on the phone,” Seamus said, pulling on the clean shirt I had just handed him over the shirt with the coffee stain. “See if there’s a back door, maybe a service elevator from the parking terrace...”
I was way ahead of him. I’d already pulled up the appearance information on my phone and had dialed the promotion director’s number. “Okay, we’ll just do a quick pass through the parking lot, give the girls a little something... Then, we’ll pull around the south side of the building and into the parking lot. Go all the way to the back to the service elevator. Someone will be waiting for us there. Is that okay? Do you think you can smile for a few seconds Dec?”
“I suppose, if I have to.” Declan said sighing.
“Hey, if you need something to smile about just think about Cleo’s breasts.” Seamus said laughing. This comment earned him not only Finneas and Declan’s laughter, but also a very hard slug from me. From now on, I’m riding up front with the driver.