:: chapter ten ::

As it turned out, opening for my brothers wasn’t as harrowing as Isobel and I thought it might be. And thankfully, our role as the opening act lasted just two weeks. Out of what I knew had to be nothing more than pure desperation, Mark had placed an advertisement on the Dallas Craigslist a few days after Serendipity had pulled out of the tour, and had netted an act that we all quickly decided was a keeper – a three-piece group consisting of two guys and a girl that went by the name of Mungojerrie. And more so than Serendipity had, they fit in well with not only the band, but the rest of us as well.

The beginning of August heralded our arrival in the one place that my brothers and I could always call home, the city where we’d grown up. Tulsa. And as usual, I had spent the four-hour drive from Little Rock to Tulsa fast asleep in my bunk on the bus.

“Tay?”

I opened one eye and squinted out at the owner of the voice. Jessica stood in the narrow corridor that ran down the centre of the bus, the dim lighting overhead casting her in silhouette. She’d pulled my curtain across just far enough for me to see her face and not much else. Everyone else’s curtains were closed, from what I could see.

“Yeah?” I asked quietly.

“We’re nearly there.” She gave me a smile. “You and Bel are going to be spending our break at home, right?”

Home. I couldn’t help but smile when Jessica said that word. While everyone else had decided to hole up in a hotel for the five days that we would be in Tulsa, Isobel and I had chosen to spend the time at my parents’ house. It was the perfect temporary base – while it wasn’t in Tulsa itself (more like a suburb on the outskirts of the metropolitan area), it was still close enough to the city that everything was within either walking or a short driving distance.

“I’d better get changed, then,” I said as I stretched as much as the narrow bunk would allow. I was already stiff from sleeping in the one position – the bunks didn’t afford much space for shifting around, unless one wanted to find themselves rather unceremoniously dumped on the floor, so I had learned very early on not to go thrashing around in bed while on the bus. The summer of 1998 had seen me breaking my left arm for the second time after I’d fallen from my bunk, and after spending most of that tour in plaster it wasn’t something I wanted to experience a second time.

Isobel was sitting out in the main lounge area when I emerged from the tiny bathroom, having changed out of my pyjamas into jeans and a T-shirt. She looked over from the DVD she was watching as I sat down next to her and started putting on my socks and sneakers.

“Your parents don’t mind that we’ll be rocking up on their doorstep at” she quickly glanced at her watch “four-thirty in the morning?” she asked.

“Hell no,” I replied. I finished tying the laces of my left shoe and started in on my right. This particular pair had been one of my birthday presents from Jessica – they were black Converse Chuck Taylors, and as with all of my sneakers had the laces stitched into place so that they couldn’t be easily removed. “Mom’s probably up already, and if I know her as well as I should she’ll have the coffee maker going even before we walk in the door. Dad probably won’t make an appearance until much later on in the morning, unless of course Mom goes and drags him out of bed.” Isobel hid a grin at this. “With a lot of grumbling, mind you. Dad isn’t much of a morning person. Never has been.”

The lights at the front of the house were blazing when the bus rolled to a stop just outside the gates, and I grinned. At least one person was wide awake, and I had a reasonably good idea who it was. It was still dark, so while the driver unloaded the suitcases and other gear belonging to Isobel and I, I clipped Ratchet’s leash onto her collar and led the way off the bus, the penlight torch I kept on my key ring lighting the way.

“Your parents’ house is freaking huge,” Isobel whispered as I started to sort through our gear.

“Well, there are ten of us when we’re all at home,” I said with a shrug. “It has to be.” I propped my wheelchair against my suitcase, before rising up out of my crouch and looking up at the bus. “Hey Mark!” I yelled, and whacked the side of the bus to make sure I got my twin’s attention. He appeared at the bus door and squinted down at us. “Feel like helping us drag all this inside?”

“In your dreams,” he scoffed.

“You can have my last bag of almond M&M’s if you do,” I told him, deciding to appeal to his sweet tooth. I conveniently neglected to mention that I still had two full bags of the peanut butter variety stashed away in my suitcase, well away from Mark’s grabbing hands.

“If you’ve already gone through it and picked out all the green ones, I’ll never forgive you,” Mark informed me as he came down the stairs.

“I swear as a Hanson that I haven’t so much as touched it since I bought it,” I promised.

My promise seemed to appease Mark, and he picked up my camera case, suitcase and wheelchair. I followed suit with my backpack, carrying my guitar case in my left hand and holding onto Ratchet’s leash with my right. Isobel brought up the rear with her suitcase, backpack and handbag.

“What’s the security code again?” Mark asked as we walked up to the front gates.

“Three one four eight three,” I replied.

“Hang on,” Isobel said a few seconds later, as Mark punched the code into the keypad set into the right gatepost. “Isn’t that your birthday?”

“Yep,” Mark replied, a split-second before the gates swung open. “Funny thing is that it was the default code when we had the gates installed, and it just made sense not to change it.”

The back door was unlocked and slightly ajar when the three of us stepped up onto the brightly-lit back porch, and just by that I knew that Mom had to have seen the gates opening. “Ratchet, sit,” I commanded as I let go of the leash and pushed the door open. “Mom?” I called out quietly, not wanting to wake the sleeping occupants of the house. “Mom, we’re home…”

And then I saw her. Coming up the back corridor of the house was Mom, and I couldn’t help the smile that had started creeping across my face. I could be anywhere in the world, and yet as soon as I saw my mother I knew I was home. She was one of the few people who understood me, and was right at the top of a very short list of people who I knew I could count on for anything.

“It is so good to have you home,” she said with a smile as she pulled me into a close embrace.

“It’s good to be home,” I replied. “I missed you like crazy.”

“Well, we all missed you.” She released me from the embrace and held me at arm’s length. “Let me get a look at you.” Her smile disappeared as she eyed me critically, and a look of disappointment entered her blue eyes. “Oh Taylor, what am I going to do with you?” she asked, shaking her head.

“What?”

“I can tell just by looking at you that you haven’t been sleeping as much as you know that you need to, and you’ve barely been eating. I thought we discussed this.”

“I’ve been taking my medication, though,” I told her, content in the knowledge that I’d done at least one thing right.

“Which is obvious, because you’re still walking around,” Mom said dryly. “Come on, inside with you while I say hello to your brother.”

I sighed and nodded, before letting out a quiet but shrill whistle. Ratchet reacted immediately, darting into the house as Mom stepped to one side. Isobel and I exchanged glances before stepping inside ourselves.

I’d been wrong, I decided as we entered the kitchen. The coffee maker wasn’t going, and I wasn’t about to go ahead and switch it on. This house would always be my home, but I didn’t live here anymore.

Mark and Mom came inside a few moments later, Mark dragging the rest of my gear along with him. “I should get going,” he said as he set my suitcase down against the back wall of the kitchen. “I’ll be back later on, when the sun’s actually up.” He grinned. “See you later, Tay.” I raised a hand in acknowledgment, and he headed toward the back door.

“Isobel, would you like something to drink?” Mom asked as she went behind the kitchen bench and flicked the coffee maker on, before going to the cupboards above the kitchen stove.

“I’d love some orange juice if you have any,” Isobel replied.

“Can I have some coffee?” I asked hopefully.

“Taylor, the absolute last thing you need right now is more caffeine,” Mom informed me as she took down a canister and a coffee mug. “You’re having some tea, then you’re going to bed. I’m not going to argue with you about this.”

“Tea’s got more caffeine in it than coffee does,” I told her.

“Chamomile tea, Taylor. You need to catch up on whatever sleep it is that you’ve missed so far this tour. And I’m willing to bet that it’s quite a lot. Especially during the last three or four weeks.”

“Actually, Mrs. Hanson-” Isobel started.

“Isobel, honey, call me Diana,” Mom interrupted as she filled the electric kettle. “I get ‘Mrs.’ quite enough from the kids’ friends.”

“Diana, then,” Isobel corrected, sounding somewhat uneasy. “It was only for two weeks. And only because the guys were desperate – they wouldn’t have asked otherwise. Otherwise he’s been good with getting his rest.” She gently poked me in the ribs. “We’ve been sharing a hotel” I quickly squeezed her hand under the table “room this whole tour, so I should know.”

“Nice save,” I murmured. I knew that she’d been about to say ‘hotel bed’ before I’d somewhat unsubtly caused her to say otherwise.

Mom sent me upstairs a few minutes later, telling me to get ready for bed while she talked to Isobel. Not wanting to incur her rather considerable wrath so soon after my arrival back home I did as I was told, taking my suitcase and Ratchet with me. Even though it had been two years since I had left home for good I still knew my way to my old bedroom, and could easily make the journey with my eyes closed.

One of the ‘benefits’ of my brothers’ celebrity status was that we had been able to afford to leave the house on 78th Street, which by the time Mackenzie had come along was far too small for a family of nine to inhabit comfortably. The house was still owned by my parents, but was now used mostly for storage. Our ‘new’ house was more than large enough to house us all, with enough space that for the first time in my life I’d had my own bedroom. When I closed my eyes I could still picture it. Pale blue walls on which I’d hung posters, each year’s calendar, framed photographs and the occasional pinup. Soft, dark blue carpet beneath my feet, instead of the hardwood floors and slate tiling that featured in the rest of the house. The window that looked out onto the backyard and that of the house behind ours. My old desk, cluttered with old notebooks, school work, pens that had run out of ink, magazines and photography books. The second-hand cedar bookshelves that had, at one point, been bursting at the joins with every book I had ever owned. My built-in wardrobe that, with its mirrored doors, doubled as a bedroom mirror. And lastly my old bed, the one that had seen me through six summers’ worth of the ups and downs of my illness.

Thankfully, my parents hadn’t cleaned my room out, and so its contents remained intact. It wasn’t until I sank down onto my bed that I realised how tired I truly was – my excitement over being home had worn off, and now I was just exhausted. I needed to sleep, and I knew it.

A quiet knock sounded at the door just after I had changed back into my pyjamas. “Come in,” I said, not bothering to get up from where I sat on my bed, looking out the window with my back to the door. Soon I felt the mattress dip down as someone sat down next to me, and I cast a glance sideways to see that it was my mother. “Hey.”

“Isobel will be up in a little while,” she told me. I felt her fingers removing the elastic band from around my ponytail as she spoke. “Tay, you need a haircut.”

“S’only way people can tell us apart without hearing either of us talk, or looking at our wrists,” I told her, referring to Mark.

“There is one other way,” Mom said, and I felt her touch the left side of my chin, just below my mouth. “You have a small mole right here. Mark doesn’t.”

“Yeah, but unless anyone knows to look for it, they’re not going to know it’s there.” I looked down at my bare feet. “And anyway, I like having long hair. It’s a pain in the ass to look after, but it’s the one thing that I have control over.”

Mom didn’t say anything in response to this. Instead she guided me down onto my back so that I was lying with my head in her lap. My eyes drifted closed as she ran her fingers through my hair.

“So what are you and Isobel planning to do during the next few days?” she asked after a little while.

“I’m going to give her the grand tour later on today, once I’ve woken up.” I opened one eye and squinted up at Mom. “And we both have to work on Friday, so odds are we’ll probably just hang around here tomorrow – I’ll be too worn out otherwise. Don’t know what’s planned for Saturday, but I do know that we’re heading off to Oklahoma City on Sunday.” I drew in a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, and closed my eye again. “We’re also going to be doing a bit of house-hunting while we’re here.”

“So are you coming back here for good, then?” Mom asked. I could hear a faint sense of hope in her tone.

“Unless the Tulsa World is hiring photographers right about now, I doubt it.” I laughed quietly. “We’re looking for a place in Brooklyn, actually. I’m sick of Manhattan, she’s sick of Queens, plus it’s still close enough to work that we’re not having to spend ages on the subway each day.” I yawned quietly. “We still haven’t told Mark and Jess that we’re moving in together, but once we’ve got a shortlist of places to check out we’ll tell them. We’ve picked October fifteenth as our moving day, so we need to find our new place soon.”

“I’d say so.” I felt her hand start tracing the two scars on my face. “Just promise me that I’m not going to become a grandmother anytime soon.”

“I swear it. Issie and I, neither of us want kids. She hates them, and the whole thing would just exhaust me too much. I’d be a rotten father.”

“Well, I would beg to differ on that, but I suppose you’d know better than I would.” I opened my eyes and looked up at her. She gave me a smile. “Come on, off to bed with you. I left your tea on your night table. Make sure you drink all of it before you go to sleep.”

Isobel came in just as I’d settled myself in bed, my mug of tea held in both hands so that my fingers didn’t cramp up. Ratchet was curled up at my feet, fast asleep.

“So how’s it feel to be home?” Isobel asked as she folded her jeans and T-shirt, setting them on my desk before climbing into bed beside me.

“It feels pretty good,” I replied. “New York is wonderful, but it’ll never really be home. Here, though…I feel alive. There are no expectations of me, so I can just be myself.” I sipped my tea carefully. “Nobody gives a damn who I am, which suits me just fine.”

My eyes were beginning to drift closed even before I finished half my tea, and I knew there was no way I’d be able to finish it all. Isobel rescued the mug from my hands and set it back down on my night table.

“You really need to sleep, Tay,” she said softly as I lay down and rolled onto my left side.

“I know,” I mumbled, half a second before sleep overtook me.

I ended up sleeping for ten hours straight, the time on my phone reading 14:45 when I was able to focus properly. Even though I was still tired, and as much as I would have loved to stay in bed all afternoon, I knew I had to get up. I’d already wasted most of the day, so there was no sense in wasting the rest of it.

Isobel was talking to Dad in the kitchen when I wandered in, shaking one of my pill bottles slightly in time with my footsteps. “Ah, it awakes,” Dad joked as I sat down at the table next to Isobel and dropped my head into my hands.

“Need coffee,” I mumbled in response. Isobel let out a quiet chuckle and got up from her seat. Less than a minute later a mug filled with piping hot black coffee was placed in front of me, and I looked up at her. “Thanks,” I said gratefully, earning myself a smile.

“So what are you two planning to do today?” Dad asked as I picked one of my pills out of their bottle and popped it into my mouth, following it with a coffee chaser.

“Taylor promised to give me the grand tour while we were here,” Isobel replied. “I didn’t get much of a chance to look around back in May – we were here for literally one day. Flew in at seven-thirty that morning, left at ten that night.”

“That’s work for you,” I said without looking up from my coffee.

“But since we have a bit of time on our hands,” Isobel continued, as if I hadn’t even said a word, “we’re probably going to drive around and see where that takes us.”

“She wants to see the old house too,” I added. I finished my coffee and set my mug down on the table. “I should probably get dressed though. I don’t think the whole of Tulsa wants to see me in my pyjamas.”

Once I was dressed and had my shoes on, I dug my wallet, keys and phone out of my backpack, crammed them into my pockets, and headed back downstairs. Isobel was waiting in the kitchen, sitting on the scrubbed wooden table and swinging a key ring around her right index finger. I snatched it away and stuck my tongue out at her before leading the way outside.

My old Toyota, a sixteenth birthday present from my parents, was still parked in the garage, with its accompanying key on the key ring I’d taken from Isobel. “God, I haven’t seen this in years,” I said almost wistfully, grinning as I caught sight of the green sticker that had a home on the rear bumper. Emblazoned on the sticker in silver text were the words Proud Slytherin Reject. “Avery put that on there a few summers ago,” I explained as I unlocked the driver’s side door. “The irony is that on every single Harry Potter sorting test I’ve ever done, I’ve landed Slytherin House.” I cocked an eyebrow at Isobel. “Must be the misanthrope in me.”

“You, a misanthrope?” Isobel mock-snorted. “That’ll be the day…”

Our drive into Tulsa took fifteen minutes – ten minutes to get into the city itself, and a further five minutes to reach 78th Street. The old house was about halfway along the street. As soon as I caught sight of it a wave of nostalgia washed over me.

“So this is where you grew up,” Isobel commented as I swung my car into the driveway.

“Yep,” I replied. I cut the engine and took my key out of the ignition. “We left not long after Zoë’s first birthday.”

It took a bit of fiddling with my keys as I tried to remember which key matched the doorknob and which one matched the deadbolt, but I eventually managed to let us into the house. I stopped just inside the front door and closed my eyes.

“Tay?” I heard Isobel say. She sounded worried. “Are you all right?”

“Do you remember how I told you that Christmas 1999 was when I first got sick?” I asked.

“I do.”

“It was the sickest I’d been in my whole life. Up until that point, anyway. When my parents picked me up at the airport I could barely walk, I’d lost an incredible amount of weight that I honestly couldn’t afford to lose, and I hadn’t eaten in about a week. I couldn’t stay awake long enough.” I opened my eyes again. “They brought me here for my Christmas break so that I could rest and at least try to get better, away from everyone else at the other house. Dad ended up carrying me through the front door.” I let out a quiet chuckle. “I was almost six feet tall by that time, so you can imagine what it must have looked like.”

I lowered myself to the floor and started tracing patterns on the carpet. “Of course, I didn’t end up getting better. It might happen someday, but I’ve had CFS for almost eight years now – it’s not looking very likely to me. I’ve improved somewhat since then, mostly because I’m on medication, but I’ve pretty much come to accept that I may never recover completely. It’s really a matter of waiting to see what happens.” I picked at a few loose threads on my jeans. “The hardest lesson I ever had to learn was to slow down. I had to learn to pace myself, to decide what was most important, and to accept that this was how things had to be from now on.” I gave Isobel a small smile. “Needless to say, between being sick and starting college at sixteen, I had to grow up very fast.”

From there, I gave Isobel a quick tour of the house. “There were four of you in here?” she asked in what sounded like amazement when we reached my old bedroom.

“Mmm-hmm. We had two sets of bunk beds in here – Mark and I had one, and Isaac and Zac had the other. Just along those walls there.” I gestured along the two side walls of the room. One of the sets of bunk beds remained in there, the ones that Mark and I had shared. “It got very noisy in here. It was one hell of a relief to get my own room.”

“I can believe that,” Isobel said with a chuckle. “I had to share a room with Sami and Kat while we were growing up, and the amount of fights we got into was astounding.” She looked sidelong at me. “Did you ever fight with your brothers?”

I shook my head. “Never. They fought with one another sometimes, but for some reason I could never find a reason to fight with them. I got hacked off at them sometimes, sure, but if it was Isaac or Zac who I was irked at I usually just gave them the silent treatment for about a week. That was long enough for them to realise that maybe I wasn’t talking to them because I was extremely pissed off.”

“What about Mark?”

I eyed Isobel. “Have you met Mark? Issie, he’s my twin. There’s probably no-one else in the world, aside from my mother, who knows me better than he does. It’s literally impossible for me to ignore him for longer than about a few hours. He knows how to get me to talk, and he doesn’t let up until I do. I might be the family expert at giving the cold shoulder, but he’s the master at getting people to open up.”

The tour ended in the basement, where my brothers had once had a practice space. Here and there I could see evidence of the area’s former purpose – broken drumsticks, snapped and frayed guitar strings, scraps of sheet music and composition paper, and lyrics scrawled in permanent marker on the walls.

“So this is where the magic happened once upon a time,” Isobel said as she walked around the basement. She trailed her fingers along the walls as she made a circuit.

“Once upon a time,” I echoed. “Years ago, my brothers spent almost every waking moment down here. They only ever came upstairs for meals, showers, changing clothes, lessons and to sleep. Mark and Zac even blew off their soccer games and practices.”

“It all paid off in the end, though.”

“That it did,” I agreed. I sat down on the bottom step and stretched my legs out. It wasn’t long before Isobel finished her explorations and came to join me. “Do you know why I invited you to my brothers’ concert that first time?” I asked her.

“Well, at the time, you said that it was because you thought I might like to…what were the words you used?”

“Experience the madness for yourself,” I finished. “That wasn’t the only reason, Issie.” I twirled one of her curls around my right index finger. “I asked you because one, during your interview you really impressed me. Not many people act that professionally – I’m sure Schuyler’s told you about how a lot of journalists attempt to include Jess and I, when we’re not even part of the band. And two, I wanted to get to know you better. You…well, you really intrigued me. There was just something about you that made me want to find out more about you. And I’m glad I did.”

“Me too,” Isobel agreed. She gave me a sweet smile. “I honestly thought that after I finished the interview, that would be the end of it and I’d never see you again. Of course, it wasn’t. And for that I’m thankful.” She picked at the knee of her jeans. “I’m pretty sure I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Tay,” she said softly.

“Really?”

She nodded. “Really.”

I eyed her. “You want to get married?”

“What, now?” She raised an eyebrow at me. “And in your old basement?”

“Well, no, not in here, and not right now. But one day.”

“You do realise that isn’t much of a proposal, don’t you?”

“Didn’t mean it as one.”

“I see.” She put her left hand on top of my right and intertwined our fingers. “One day, then. I think I’d like that.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” I leaned down and hiked up the left leg of my jeans, and scratched my ankle. “I’ve realised something in the six months I’ve known you,” I said as I straightened up.

“What’s that?”