Patchwork People Chapter II The Good Man Hard to Find
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Patchwork People XXX: Book Of Changes. free porn video
XXX. Book of changes.
One morning Marcia came into the Blue Cat and found Grace packing up the
snow-globe collection. She carefully wrapped each plastic globe in
newspaper before nesting it inside a box beside the others.
"What happened? Did Mrs. Pritchard have second-thoughts about selling?"
Marcia's eyes widened in disbelief. "Don't tell me you got a taker for
the entire collection?"
"Neither, I'm afraid," Grace said.
Marcia began setting out that morning's baked selections. Raisin-apple-
bran muffins, almond crescents, and apple-purses still warm from the
oven. The delicious aroma of fresh-baked goods filled the snug little
store. She paused to look questioningly at Grace, who'd been debating all
morning whether or not to tell Marcia the truth.
"I decided not to sell them," Grace said at last.
"Why for heaven's sake not?"
"Because her business is no longer welcome at the Blue Cat."
Marcia stopped what she was doing. "Please tell me what happened." She
had a sinking sense that she already knew what Grace was going to say.
It had happened in the supermarket the day before. Grace was doing her
weekly shopping, looking for creamed corn when she ran into Mavis
Pritchard in the canned vegetable aisle. Actually, their meeting wasn't
quite so chance as all that. Mavis had been going passed the head of the
aisle when she caught sight of Grace. She backed up her cart and turned
into the aisle. She pretended to be browsing the section where they
shelved the powdered sauces before putting on a show of seeing Grace, as
if she hadn't seen her all along. Grace watched the entire performance
out of the corner of her eye.
"Oh. Grace!" Mavis said, "What a nice surprise! I almost missed you
standing there. Well, hallo!"
The woman instantly forgot about the envelopes of powdered sauces and
wheeled her cart alongside Grace's cart. There was something about the
way Mavis now hurried through the usual pleasantries that tipped Grace
off as to the real intent of this "chance" meeting. Usually, Mavis had
nothing but pleasantries to exchange and lingered over them at unbearable
length. Today, she obviously had something more urgent on her mind and
Grace had already guessed what it was. Her nephew was a dispatcher with
the Hope Crossing police department and he would certainly have heard
about the vandalism at the Blue Cat.
"I'm sorry to hear about what happened at the store," she began,
innocently, but carefully, now that the conversation was honing itself to
its point.
"It wasn't a big deal. No major damage. Just some paint on the windows.
Childish vandalism. Nothing that a little elbow grease didn't set to
rights. Elbow grease courtesy of Walt."
Mavis tsk-tsked. Her face took on an expression of mock concern. "But
what was written. Such things. Disgusting."
Grace refused to rise to the bait. She shrugged. "No doubt someone about
as ignorant and intolerant as they come. Ultimately, you have to feel
sorry for someone like that."
Mavis was just as stubborn. She wasn't about to be deterred. "Still," she
said, lowering her voice confidentially, "is it true?"
"Is what true, Mavis?"
The woman leaned in further so as not to be overheard. Unnecessarily.
They were the only ones in the aisle.
"What they wrote."
"You know what was written? Because we boarded the windows up pretty
quickly and Walt got to work right away to clean them. Who told you? Your
nephew? He works for the police department, as I recall. Don't they have
some sort of confidentiality rule in place?" Grace asked, knowing full
well, of course, that they did.
Mrs. Pritchard was visibly annoyed. She anticipated such an obvious trap,
of course, and had already devised a way around it, but she nonetheless
resented the delay in getting to the gossipy nitty-gritty.
"No, of course not. I didn't hear it from my nephew. These things get
around, who knows how, in such a small town." She shrugged her flower-
patterned shoulders. "It's just inevitable, I guess."
Grace knew all-too-well how these things "got around." In Mrs. Mavis
Pritchard, she was looking at one of the ways.
"So," Mavis pressed on, in that same sotte voce as she'd used before, "is
it true? It's not as if there weren't rumors to the effect before, you
know."
"Honestly Mavis, I don't see what difference it makes one way or another.
Not to mention who's business it is."
Her old friend looked momentarily stung. She had expected better of their
confidence, Grace supposed.
"Well, I guess that somewhat answers my question doesn't it?" Mavis said
a little huffily. "So tell me. Did you know all along?"
"Yes." Grace said, making a decision to take a stand. "I did."
"You did?" Mavis seemed positively scandalized, even if any reasonable
person would have expected Grace to have known. She still seemed to
harbor the secret wish that Grace had been taken by surprise. Well, at
least been taken by surprise as much as Mavis herself had. "And
you...accepted it?"
"Mavis, I really don't see what the big deal is. Accepted it? It's not a
matter of acceptance. It's a simple fact. The way things are, you might
say."
"Oh there's nothing we have to accept about it. I, for one, refuse to
accept such an unnatural thing," Mavis said, her mouth chewing down hard
on the words. "It's entirely unacceptable. I'm surprised at you Grace."
"And I'm sorry to say that I'm not so surprised at you Mavis."
"What ever is that supposed to mean?"
Grace sighed and shook her head sadly. Because her old friend's reaction
really wasn't a surprise and if Grace had suspected that before, she knew
it for certain now. You could be friends with someone for decades and
know deep down there is a line you won't be able to cross. You can ignore
that line because you know that in the normal course of a life you'll
never reach it. But if you do by some unforeseen circumstance happen upon
it a choice will have to be made. Grace was being forced to make that
choice now and she knew it. Mavis seemed to understand and was in the
process of making a choice of her own.
"Under the circumstances," she said, "I don't think I can do business any
more at the Blue Cat."
"Under the circumstances," Grace said, "I don't think I want you to."
And, with that, a friendship of over half-a-century ended. A friendship
that had weathered grade school rivalries and high-school melodrama,
crushes on the same boys, petty jealousies, secret confidences, and any
number of minor fallings-out, the vacillations of fortune in the
sweepstakes of marriage, home, and children, the deaths of spouses,
illnesses both occasional and serious, hopes and tragedies too numerous
to count ended right here in aisle 6, the canned vegetable section of the
Hope Crossing Food Haven.
Grace watched her former friend stolidly, self-righteously push her cart
towards the frozen fish section before she herself went in the opposite
direction. She lingered by the magazines and stationary, determined to
avoid Mavis at the checkout. It wasn't until she arrived home that she
realized she'd forgotten to pick up the creamed corn.
* * *
Why was he being so damn stubborn? He seemed to be making himself
purposely obtuse. Everything was ruined in Hope Crossing. Couldn't Walt
see that? He wasn't a dull man. He just didn't want to see it, that's
what Marcia was thinking, wringing a napkin to death between her
worrisome fingers. She was sitting on the park bench beneath the Edgar
Birdwell statue, hidden behind dark glasses, the first time she'd shown
her face in town for days after Grace's disclosure.
"You don't understand. This is a friendship of a half century! They knew
each other since kindergarten. Do you know how it makes me feel to know
that I'm the reason it ended?"
"You're not the reason it ended."
"No? So then what is?"
"Stupidity and narrow-mindedness. That's what brought it to an end. "
Walt had coaxed Marcia out of her voluntary exile and to meet him in the
park, but it hadn't been easy. She'd been holed up at the carriage house,
contemplating what to do next, packing up and leaving town for parts
unknown being right there at the top of every shortlist.
Marcia shrugged. "What difference does it make what the reason?
Everything is ruined now. The whole town will know, if it doesn't
already."
"So?"
"So?" Marcia gaped at Walt. Exasperated. "So? So-the-whole-town-will-
know." She spoke deliberately, as if to a child.
One of the things that Walt usually understood that so many men didn't
was that not every broken thing could be fixed. It was an unusual
insight, not just for a man, but especially for one so accustomed to
repairing what's been broken. Walt seemed to get the difference between
fixing a broken machine and fixing a broken heart. He seemed to
understand that sometimes the real problem wasn't to fix a thing but that
it had been broken in the first place. Well, ordinarily he understood the
difference, which is what made his matter-of-fact tone now all the more
annoying.
"I should have gotten that operation before I even tried to start over,"
Marcia said. "If I had, this wouldn't have happened."
"You don't think so?"
"No one could have disputed that I was a woman then. Even if they somehow
found out about my past."
"Let me get this straight. You think people like Mavis Pritchard are
going to magically come to accept you as a woman just because you've had
an operation?"
Marcia was quiet. She stared at the mangled napkin in her lap.
"I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the Mavis Pritchards of
this world won't consider you a woman just because you've had your parts
exchanged. Instead, they'll say that all you've managed to do is to
mutilate yourself, that being a woman is about more than just the outward
appearance of your genitalia. Of course, they're right about that. So why
do you think they won't accept you as a woman now, before an operation?"
It was a good question without a satisfactory answer.
"Marcia, you know as well as I do that if you do get the operation it
can't be to convince people like Mavis Pritchard. It'll never work.
They'll say, well, you may have a vagina but you don't have a womb, you
can't conceive a baby, even though there are plenty of biological women
who can't bear a child either. Those sorts of ironies are lost on people
like that. And even if medical science is one day able to equip you with
a functioning womb, they'll say that doesn't count either. They'll say
it's your genes that make you a woman, so it'll be that because you were
born with the wrong genes you can't eve be a woman. And even if you could
one day be genetically altered, not beyond the realm of some future
possibility I imagine, they'll still say it doesn't count. They'll say
you weren't born a woman. Or that God didn't make you a woman.
"Don't you understand? People like Mavis live in a world where no one is
allowed to change, where things are what they are and they're fated to be
that way, determined by nature or God or society fate or genes or
whatever they appeal to in order to give some sense of comforting
security to their lives. These are often people who've hardly made any
changes in their own lives, either out of stubbornness or fear or some
mistaken sense of duty or fidelity to who-knows-what, and they resent
that anyone who dares to change his or her own life, who takes a chance,
and, worst of all, proves it's possible to succeed.
"They believe they've sacrificed their own happiness and true self for
something or other and they've made a virtue of their own cowardice and
at the same time they're jealous that you haven't made the same
sacrifice. What gives you the right to be who you want to be? That's how
they think. What gives you the nerve to abandon your post, the one you
were given at birth? They haven't. Just who do you think you are, Marcia
Hammond?"
Walt was right, of course, and Marcia told him so, but it wasn't as
simple as he was making it out. There was still the business of living
the truth of what he said.
"I'm just not strong enough," she admitted, which was her real fear, had
been her real fear, all along. "I wasn't cut out to be in-your-face-
defiant. I'm not like you."
"Thank god for that," Walt laughed. "I don't think I could stand waking
to see my grizzled old mug on the pillow beside me every morning. Listen,
Marcia, you don't have to be like me. You have me for that."
Marcia shook her head. "All I've ever wanted was to fade into the
background. I just want to be a normal anonymous woman, like I was meant
to be in the first place."
Walt nodded. "As a wise old sage named Jaegger once said..."
"I know. You can't always get what you want."
"But sometimes you get what you need. You aren't facing this alone,
Marcia. Why can't I get that through that pretty but thick little head of
yours? If you decide to go for it then you should. If the operation is
what you really want, then I'm all for it and I support you 100%. But
this has to be for you, not for the world's approval and acceptance, not
for Phoebe's, not even for mine. For me you are and always have been all-
girl, no matter what sort of plumbing you might have. You're a woman
here," he said, laying a thick forefinger on Marcia's forehead, "and
here" he said, touching it to her heart.
Tears began to run from the sides of Marcia's big round sunglasses. Her
breath caught. "I never wanted this to be a problem for you Walt.
Especially not for you."
"Marcia, I've had plenty of problems in my life. Believe me, I know what
a problem is. I'm a world-class authority. And I assure you, this is not
a problem."
She was about to say something in reply, but instead, Walt reached over
the back of the bench and pulled her close and kissed her, a kiss right
there in the middle of Birdwell Park, presided over by the statue of
Edgar Birdwell, and witnessed by anyone and everyone who might be
passing, a kiss any man and woman might share, as if their love were
indeed no more problem than any other love; indeed, no problem at all. It
was a kiss that meant more to Marcia than any kiss she'd ever gotten or
would ever get again.
* * *
Back at the shop, Walt had her sit on the tandem so he could once again
check the most recent of the adjustments he'd made to the bike against
her measurements. As she straddled the cycle, the toes of her sneakers
just touching the ground, Walt made some adjustments to the seat post and
took note of the bend of her arms as she rested her hands on the bar
mounted to the post of what would be Walt's forward placed seat.
"Is that comfortable," he asked, making a seemingly minor adjustment.
Marcia nodded. "I think so."
"Elbows not too high? Try to imagine that you'll be on this bike,
basically in this position for quite a while. Maybe up to an hour. Would
it still be comfortable, do you think? You have to think long-term
comfort."
While he worked, he went back to their conversation in the park, picking
up where they'd left off. The gist of it was that it made no difference,
ultimately, whether anyone accepted her as a woman or not, so long as she
had any doubts herself. Even if the whole world believed she was a woman
and she didn't, what good would it be?
"After all," he said, "the whole world once believed you to be a man. Was
that ever enough to convince you?"
"No, of course not," she conceded.
"So why are you letting them convince you otherwise now?"
"I'm not."
"Are you sure of that?"
Marcia had thought of her new life as disconnected from her past and had
tried to keep the two separated with a no-man's land, pun-intended, of
vagueness and selective amnesia. But no matter what she did with her body
from this day forward, it still had a history and that history was a part
of her and nothing, Walt insisted, to be ashamed of. She couldn't
eliminate that past no more than a first chapter in a book disappeared
when the last chapter was reached. You couldn't get here without having
been there. The measure of any character was how much they'd grown from
first page to last and that couldn't be seen without seeing from where
they started.
"I know it's difficult baby," Walt had said, bent over the bike, turning
a wrench, "but you should be proud of how far you've come." He
straightened up, red-faced, and wiped his brow. "You know, did you ever
think, maybe you aren't a girl or a boy, but something else altogether?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean some new combination that maybe takes a little of the best of
both? I think the Thai have a sense of something like this. They call
transgendered people the 'third sex.' Well, maybe that's what you are.
Something new. Something on the horizon. Anyway, why force yourself into
a mold? Either this or that. Who said there had to be only two sexes? I
don't know. I'm just talking out of my ass here, probably. What do I
know? I'm just an undereducated grease monkey. But I've never been a big
fan of limitation. Why do we have to choose. Why can't we have both? In
the end, you are what you are. Why try to fit yourself into a category
that makes you less than that? If you're a girl whose got a penis, why
not let yourself be that? If that's the way you're happy, then that is
the way you should be. Then that is the way God meant you to be. You
shouldn't have to change."
"I'd change it for you."
"I know you would, baby. And I appreciate that. But I don't want you to
change into anything other than happier."
"I don't think I could be happier..."
"Then why change a thing?"
What the exact tipping point was Marcia couldn't say, but she continued
to think over what Walt had said throughout the rest of the day. At the
supermarket in the next town, where she'd gone shopping in order to avoid
running into anyone from Hope Crossing. At the Blue Cat when she dropped
by after closing time to give Grace a hand. His words were the last thing
she heard before she gave up trying to read the book on her nightstand,
turned off the light, and slipped down beneath the bed covers. They were
the first thing she heard upon waking in the morning.
Marcia watched the morning light creeping it's way across the wet lawn
outside her curtained window. A sparrow was pecking about in a puddle of
seeds spilled by the squirrels who'd earlier been swinging from the
feeder. There was still time to do some baking and get down to the Blue
Cat. Just like that she realized that she'd decided against the
operation, at least for now. She'd accused him of being thick-headed. But
Walt was right after all. Who was she trying to convince? Why change a
thing?
* * * *
Author note: I plan to publish "Patchwork People" in its entirety in
weekly installments here on Fictionmania. In the meantime, the complete
novel is currently available as an Amazon Kindle ebook for $2.99.
For more of my writings, drawings, erotica, and photos please visit my
blog Bad Pussy
sissyforlife(dot)blogspot(dot)com.
Brandy
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