Betsy
- 2 years ago
- 31
- 0
Betsy stood in front of a full body mirror, looking at her reflection. She was wearing a black robe. This was the first time she had put one on. Rather than having the full length sleeves of Druid robes, the robe she wore was sleeveless. This allowed the golden torq, her symbol of service to the Two-Sided One on her arm, to be visible.
She turned a little to catch her profile in the mirror. Then she turned the other way examining her appearance once again. She decided she liked the way the robe looked, and the way it made her look.
Kelly, dressed in her green robe, watched from across the room. She smiled at the slight exhibition of vanity on Betsy’s part. It was a very rare occasion when Betsy took much of an interest in her appearance. From what others had said, it appeared that the last time she was so concerned with her outfit was when she was getting ready for her first date with Chuck. The story was that she had been in a tizzy.
“You look pretty,” Kelly said.
“Do you really think so?” Betsy asked.
“Yes. You make a beautiful bride,” Kelly said.
Betsy wasn’t sure that she believed Kelly. After all, mothers were supposed to say things like that. She always felt that all of the years of moving and physical activity had produced a body that wasn’t very feminine looking. She had muscles in her legs that could carry her for miles at a fast run that marathoners could not hope to match, on their best day. She had muscles in her arms that would let her lift incredible weights. Her stomach had six pack abs. She was strong and she looked strong. There wasn’t any way to deny that.
Betsy asked, “You don’t think I look a little butch?”
“What?” Claire asked, surprised by the question.
“Well, you know I’m kind of muscular and physically built. I don’t think that...”
Linda interrupted, “That doesn’t make you look butch.”
“There’s no question that you’re a woman,” Kelly said.
Claire said, “You’re beautiful.”
“I guess,” Betsy said softly.
She lifted her robe and stared at her legs. She didn’t have dancer’s legs. She didn’t have the legs of a super model. She had the legs of an athlete.
Kelly said, “Don’t look one part of your body and think that defines your whole appearance. Your legs, waist, butt, breasts, and face make a total package. The overall result is beautiful.”
“Chuck is always saying that I’m exotically beautiful. I think that’s a polite way of saying something different.”
Claire laughed. “I’ve seen him looking at you. He means exactly what he’s saying.”
“You can say that again,” Kelly said.
Betsy blushed. She had caught him looking at her, too. Needless to say, the expression on his face always sent a thrill through her body.
Kelly chuckled. Smiling she said, “I used to imagine your wedding ceremony with you sitting on a stationary bike peddling like mad while you exchanged vows with the groom.”
Betsy giggled at the mental image her mother’s comment produced.
Linda said, “Back when you were supercharged, I never thought this day would come.”
Claire said, “Me, too.”
“Honestly, I grew up thinking that I’d never get married,” Betsy admitted.
“I guess a lot of people thought that.”
Betsy said, “Even after I started my service, I figured that I’d have to marry a professional wrestler.”
“A professional wrestler? Why on earth would you think that?”
“I was afraid that I’d break any normal guy,” Betsy said.
The three mothers were quiet while they considered what Betsy had said. Each of them realized that it was a legitimate concern on her part. She was extremely strong and had always had to take care to not over do it when hugging. The idea that she would lose control and hurt her lover was a fear that none of them had ever suspected she held.
Kelly said, “I never even thought of that.”
“I was really concerned about it,” Betsy said.
“I can understand why you might have felt that way,” Linda said.
“I was really happy when I discovered that wasn’t really a problem. In fact, I was overjoyed!” Betsy said.
All of the mothers smiled at that.
Kelly nudged Claire with an elbow. Getting the hint, Claire said, “I guess I should get outside and see how things are progressing.”
“Same here,” Linda said realizing that Kelly wanted a chance to talk with Betsy alone.
“I guess everyone should be here that is going to be here,” Betsy said.
The two women left the room, quietly closing the door behind them.
Now that she was alone with Betsy, Kelly said, “Do you know what makes you and William so special?”
“Our service to the Two-Sided One?” Betsy asked.
Kelly smiled at that. It was true that made them special in a way, but that wasn’t what she meant.
She said, “No. It’s that you two live less in the past than any other two people I know. Most people are tired before the present even arrives.
“Everyone is shaped by their past. The pain of growing up leaves a lot of scars on most people. Those scars are a drain on people’s emotional energy. It’s as if the past drags them down.
“William has almost always lived in the future. He seldom even thinks about the past or even the present. His energy is spent on the future before the present even arrives.
“You, on the other hand, live almost exclusively in the present. I’ve always felt that was the secret to your incredible energy. You weren’t drained by the past and didn’t reserve anything for the future. You were always in the now.
“When you are running, the last ten miles hasn’t drained your energy because you are only focused on the current step. There is always energy for the current step when the past doesn’t really exist for you. You can throw every thing into the now. A second from now, you can do it again and again. It’s really rather remarkable.
“When you started your service, I think your time horizon expanded a little to take into account the past and the future, more so the future than the past.”
Betsy said, “I never thought about it that way. I’m not sure that I see it that way.”
Kelly was quiet for the moment. She said, “You know how you can watch a movie in which the main characters are beset on all sides by difficulties that would drain a normal person. You see the characters stagger through the desert dying of thirst and baking under the sun. You watch it, but it doesn’t tire you out because it’s not real to you.
“You experience your past as if it was a film that you’re watching. It almost as if your past happened to someone else.”
“I guess that’s true.”
Kelly said, “I noticed the difference after you started your service to the Two-Sided One. It was a subtle change and one that was easy to miss.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Betsy said.
“Before you began your service, you often seemed rather impulsive. Now, you are much more measured in how you act. However, when you need to, you can focus entirely on the now and your energy kicks into overdrive. That’s a very rare gift.”
“I suppose.”
“Now, you are getting married and your horizons will have to expand a bit more,” Kelly said.
“You mean I need to think about how my actions will affect Chuck?”
“Yes.”
Betsy said, “I already learned that lesson.”
“You did?”
“I discovered how much he worries about me when I’m out doing my thing.”
“How did that happen?”
Betsy said, “You know about it. He was kidnapped and I was worried when he didn’t show up.”
“Ah!” Kelly exclaimed.
That episode had endeared Chuck to her more than anything. His determination and willingness to suffer while protecting Betsy had convinced Kelly that her daughter had found a great man to marry. In fact, she had been surprised that Betsy hadn’t moved up the wedding after that had happened.
“He’s got a lot of strength in him.”
“He loves you a lot,” Kelly said.
“I love him a lot,” Betsy said with a private little smile. She chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just remembering that stupid poetry class where my professor kept spouting all of this nonsense about love. He never considered getting beaten to an inch from death to be a demonstration of love,” Betsy said.
“Of course not,” Kelly said.
“It used to really bug him when I’d start shadow boxing in the middle of class.”
“I can imagine,” Kelly said with a short laugh.
Betsy said, “You know, I’m really lucky to have Chuck. He complements me. He’s strong where I’m weak.”
“You are lucky indeed,” Kelly said.
The door opened and Ling, wearing one of her Victorian dresses, stepped into the room. She balanced a silver tray in one hand while closing the door. The tray held a small tea set.
Kelly said, “I’ll leave you two alone.”
“Thank you,” Ling said.
“You brought tea,” Betsy said.
“It’s been a long time since you and I have shared tea,” Ling said.
“I’ve really missed that.”
With calm measured movements, Ling went about setting up the tea set. Betsy sat down at one of the chairs by the small table on which Ling was working. Ling poured a cup of tea and offered it to Betsy. Betsy took the cup and saucer. Ling poured a cup of tea for herself.
Ling and Betsy both took a sip of the tea.
Betsy said, “That’s very good tea.”
“It’s some of yours. I’m not sure what kind it is,” Ling said.
“It’s probably the one grown here on the island.”
Ling nodded her head and took another sip of tea. She put the cup down and said, “I wanted a chance to talk to you alone before you got married.”
“I wanted that too. It’s been a little crazy around here,” Betsy said.
Ling said, “My mother and father died when I was pretty young. My mother was a beautiful woman with a proper English accent. My father was pretty liberal for a Chinese man. After all, he married an English woman.”
“I’m sure that was pretty tough thing back then,” Betsy said.
“When my parents died, I was in a rather precarious position. Orphans don’t do well in some parts of the world. Orphan girls can have it particularly rough. I was fortunate that my uncle took me in. Unlike my father, he was very traditional and conservative. As far as he was concerned, I had two strikes against me. I wasn’t Chinese enough and I was a girl.
“He told me that on the very first day I arrived at his house. He told me that he would not tolerate any failure to excel. That if I gave him any trouble that he would kick me out of the house to fend for myself.”
Betsy said, “I didn’t know that.”
“My uncle ran a martial arts school. He figured that since I was not likely to ever marry that I should have the skills and training that would allow me to make a living. He was afraid that I would be a constant drain on him. He believed that if I were adequately trained in the martial arts that some rich man would pay me to serve as a bodyguard to his wife.”
“That’s not very nice.”
Ling said, “For years, he forced me to go to school to get a proper education. After school, I would learn the martial arts from him.”
“At least you liked the martial arts,” Betsy said.
Ling said, “I hated it. He demanded perfection. He had this stick that he would use to correct my positioning. It wasn’t a little lift here with it, but rather, he’d hit the incorrectly positioned part of my body with that stick so hard that it hurt. I was almost always covered with bruises. For hours and hours every day without exception, I had to practice. He’d correct every little mistake with a painful reminder that I was not doing it correctly.
“I hated him. I don’t know how many times I fell asleep thinking about how I would kill him one day.”
“I always thought that you loved your uncle,” Betsy said.
Ling said, “One day some men came to the dojo. They got into an argument with my uncle. I don’t know what they argued about, but it was pretty heated. They left and then returned an hour later. I watched them kill my uncle in cold blood. He was murdered.
“When the men turned their attention to me, every lesson my uncle had taught me just jelled. My form was perfect. There wasn’t a wasted motion. I killed those men. I killed all of them.
“When it was over, I was left in the dojo staring at the body of my uncle. It was only at that moment that I realized that he wasn’t actually that bad of a man. He had taken care of me in his own way as misguided as it was. I think he had actually loved me. He had given me the ability to take care of myself.”
“You really had it rough.”
Ling said, “John and Ed always criticized me for going overboard in defending my family. Twice, I’d already lost all of the family I knew. I was never going to allow anyone to take my family from me again.”
“I don’t blame you,” Betsy said.
Ling wiped her eyes. She said, “There were two memories of my childhood that I truly treasured. The first was having tea with my mother. We’d dress up in clothes out of the Victorian era and have a formal tea. She’d tell me about growing up in London and what it was like living there as a young woman.
“I know it was kind of silly to be dressing up in Victorian outfits, but they were ... I don’t know. They were big and frilly. They weren’t really even sexy, since they hid a whole lot more than they exposed. They just created a special atmosphere that was very English.
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The modern person, who has lived a significant percentage of their life in a digital economy, can not imagine what life would be like without checks, credit cards, debit cards, and online banking. Mortgages, rent, utilities, and insurance are paid with check or by electronic transfer. Large purchases and consumer goods are paid with credit cards, or checks. Plastic is not reserved only for big items. People will whip out a credit or debit card to pay for a five dollar lunch, or a cup of...
With Sally away on her honeymoon, Betsy was at loose ends. After Chuck’s kidnapping, she just didn’t want to take off for the ocean for a week at a time. At this point, it wasn’t necessary. She had all of the biological data necessary for her dissertation. All that was missing was sufficient tracking data to support her arguments and time would take care of that. She didn’t need to tag any more sharks since she had already tagged far more of them than was necessary for her dissertation. For...
Ling said, “You look like hell.” “I’ve been around your daughter for a couple of days,” Gary replied pointedly. He tried to count the days, but they all ran into a blur of move and move and move. He had never been so tired in his life. Trying to keep up with Betsy was a constant effort. She was always in motion and that required him to always be in motion. The normal human being wasn’t built for that level of activity. “You should get some rest,” Kelly said. Gary pointed at Ling and said,...
In what has to be one of the greatest plays on words of all time, Mark Twain wrote: ‘Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.’ “This can’t possibly be happening. It’s impossible. I just won’t accept it.” Everyone has observed denial at work. Everyone has experienced denial for him or her self. Denial is a universal experience. One can deny it, but that denial rather proves the point. Denial is an unavoidable consequence of how the human mind works. The human mind makes gross generalizations...
In the short time she had worked for Betsy, life for Charlie had been interesting. Still unable to get around with any kind of ease, Charlie was more than happy to sit behind the desk and take care of the hundreds of little things, that had been ignored by Betsy. She’d been stunned to discover that Betsy hadn’t even bothered to open a local bank account. She had been shocked one day, to discover a past due statement buried with the stack of mail that had accumulated over a couple of weeks....
Betsy was pacing around outside the construction site. The site engineer (Stan Kubrick) and one of the foremen (Jim Franklin) were there with her, wondering why she had literally dragged them away from their homes. Chuck was standing under a palm, enjoying the shade, while George was nervously licking his lips. A man wandered by and stared at the group for a second. Finally, he approached and said, “Hey, Jim!” “Hello, Kirk.” “What are you doing here?” Kirk asked. He had been working on...
Betsy stood in front of the little stand that was selling meat. The stand had once been a little souvenir hut that had sold glitzy trinkets to tourists. It had a fake grass roof, giving it a kind of hokey appearance that tourists expected of a tropical island. She wondered where it had come from, but wasn’t interested enough to ask. A bird flew overhead and landed upon a branch of a nearby bush. She turned to look at it. It was a red crested cardinal. Like many of the more common birds on...
Betsy skipped down the hallway pausing to read the sign on each door. The other students in the hallway would move over to the other side to avoid getting hit by the jump rope. She stopped in front of one of the doors and read the name off the nameplate aloud, “Sally Tilton.” She stepped back nearly hitting a student with her jump rope and read the sign on the door aloud, “Keep out.” She stopped swinging the rope around, but kept up the jumping motion while knocking on the door. She called...
Betsy paced the floor, criss-crossing the living room in her house. Fortunately, the house was built with a wide open spacial style that allowed her a lot of room to move. If the room had been a bit smaller, she would have been bouncing off the walls ... literally, not figuratively. Not for the first time since returning to the house that morning, she asked, “Where is he?” “I don’t know,” Charlie answered without having to ask who he was. “Why isn’t Gary here?” “He had to go to the...
With the destruction of the economy, a number of things had changed in the world. One, which almost no one would even think about, was the disappearance of certain specialty shops, of which bridal stores were a good example. There just wasn’t a place to buy what had become a traditional wedding gown. What few dresses had remained on the shelves of stores at the time of the collapse had long since disappeared. Young couples getting married now tended to wear nice dresses and suits. The new...
The desert stretches from horizon to horizon, existing in both time and space. One man gazes upon it and sees paradise. Another man gazes upon the same scene and only sees desolation. One desert, two men, and three entirely different worlds. It is not a mystery why people argue and bicker over nearly everything. If two people can’t agree on something as vast and as timeless as a desert, why should it be a surprise if they can’t agree on much of anything? The variations in preferences of even...
Charlie was wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair. As with a lot of patients, she had argued that it wasn’t necessary, except that it was. Her prosthetic was packed away in her luggage, which Betsy was carrying. Either the infection had been a little more aggressive than she had thought, or she had really been a lot more tired than she had felt. She was so weak that she was afraid that she might not be able to use the crutches she’d been given. Once they were outside, Betsy handed the...
Tight-lipped, Ed stared at the man. Talking with him was a constant assault on his truth sense. The longer he talked, the worse the lies got. It was as if one lie emboldened the next. Ed said, “She was drugged.” “The test results were lost,” the man said with a smirk. Ed’s truth sense stabbed him in the brain upon hearing the lie. He said, “Quit lying.” “I’m not lying. They were lost.” “She was drugged, and you know it!” Ed shouted. The man replied, “She chewed his arm off and beat him...
Chuck wandered over to the security center and office building construction site, searching for Gary. The building was still a long ways from finished, but he could imagine what it would look like when it would be completed. The foundation was in place, the framing was complete, and some of the exterior walls had been added. Chuck found Gary inspecting the building. Gary was checking to make sure that nothing that didn’t belong had been added to the walls. There were folks who would be...
Chuck was seated in the backyard passing the time by watching a couple of birds working together in building a nest. Watching them build a structure for the results of their mating reminded him that he was going to be married soon. He was looking forward to the event without the kind of nervousness that plagued many grooms. There was only one downside – he wished his parents were still alive to see him get married. He wished his parents could have met Betsy. He was sure they would have loved...
Sally walked into the room thinking that she had made a horrible mistake. There were a lot of people, none of whom she recognized, moving around. She grabbed Gary’s arm to prevent being separated from him. Betsy had disappeared somewhere into the heart of the party. It was a typical frat party – a lot of testosterone driven young men, scantily dressed young women, too much booze, not enough light; and loud music, which made talking impossible. The air had the lingering hint of a sickly sweet...
The sound of waves crashing along the beach provided a background noise that Betsy found particularly relaxing. She was sitting tailor fashion on the beach, looking out across the ocean at the distant horizon. This was about as calm as Betsy could appear to act. It truly was an appearance of calm rather than true calm. She was digging two holes. She was excavating one hole with each hand, and using the sand in the other hand to fill it in again. The strength required to shove her hands into...
By the morning after the altercation with Kyle, the swelling in Carl’s face had reduced to the point where he could see again. His nose was still tender, but most of the pain was gone. It was hard to believe that Kyle had been able to hurt him so badly, with just two punches. He’d been beaten up a few times in high school, but that had been nothing compared to the previous day. He had awakened that morning to find Betsy, wearing a knee-length skirt and white blouse, seated in a chair reading...
Ling, pulling Cal behind her by his ear, followed Millie and Melvin out of the plane. Betsy was inside with Kelly and the rescuers planning how to free the two men trapped in the chairs. Jimmy was over by the fire piling branches on it after getting it restarted. Ed was with him giving him pointers on the care and management of a good campfire. Ling threw Cal to the ground. Looking at Millie, she asked, “What’s the story with him?” “He’s an asshole,” Millie answered. “I figured that much...
“I agree. I will see what I can do to convince a certain young man to become a caretaker.” Harry stood behind the young man watching him. Unable to keep silent any longer, Harry said, “You’re talking to a mongoose.” “I know,” the young man answered. “They don’t talk back,” Harry said making reference to the weird one sided conversation he’d been listening to. “You don’t know that. In fact, she’s quite talkative,” the young man said while rising from his kneeling position to face...