The Other Side (Literary Fiction)

By R V Martin

Drawn to consider a new journey, Lily finds her plan met with fierce resistance by both her anti-religious partner and her Wiccan best friend. Lily’s decision to study philosophy as well as her new-found friendship with a local Christian minister further complicates relationships until the day that a shocking event changes everyone, for good.

A fly-on-the-wall-style story set in modern suburbia with the struggle for age-old answers.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: R V Martin
• Release date: Oct 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9780473263492

R V Martin

I'm a 39 year old born and raised in beautiful New Zealand. I've lived all over the north island and currently reside in Levin. I'm employed as an Adult Literacy tutor at Arohamai Literacy and absolutely feel fulfilled by the work there, teaching reading and writing to disadvantaged adults. Among other things, I love to spend my spare time doing pottery, weaving (Taaniko), and singing harmony in folk bands.

Book preview

The Other Side

R V Martin

Copyright 2013 R V Martin

Smashwords Edition

License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer: All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are entirely fictitious.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Dedicated to Glendon. I still miss you like it happened yesterday. I hope you see it all now. And to Stace: for patiently reading every word in this novel more than once. You have a light that is all your own.

Chapter 1

The Oldsmobile passed under the I-10 freeway, breaking up daylight, when its engine began to surge. Lily Hicks put a hand to the dashboard.

Olds, we have an agreement, remember? I love you, you love me back.

The engine settled into its familiar, straining throb. As Lily wound the window down it jammed open by two inches. A tepid breeze fanned her face as she hummed along to the crackling radio waves. The California sky above was a squint-worthy, stonewash blue. A countable amount of clouds lay long and flat in the air - puddled - discarded ghost costumes.

The engine surged once again. The speedometer lagged. A routine ooze of dread filled Lily’s body as traffic behind her set up an impatient chorus of blaring horns. A quick glance at the rear-view mirror showed a young male motorist flipping the bird at her.

Stores along Pico Boulevard began to pass more slowly as Lily worked the gas pedal. The engine went suddenly silent and Lily scanned the road for a free parking space. She coasted to the curb. Climbing from the defeated car, Lily set off down the street. She passed a cake shop and a wig store, exotic pet imports, an art gallery and Pico Dental when her ears caught the sound of a masculine voice cutting above street noise. The man was only meters beyond her destination, Every Witch Way.

-Might think it’s a little old-fashioned, preaching on the street… he called to passersby. The man looked to be in his early forties; intelligent: kind. An African-American girl sat on a crate beside him with a stack of leaflets in her lap, handing them out to anyone who would accept.

At the front of the pagan supplies store Every Witch Way, Suzannah Fry sat on a park bench smoking. She had a tidy, compact figure and wore all-black clothing. Her wrists were weighted with copper jewellery and her lips showed crayon red; her crow-black hair swept at an intriguing angle over one eye. She registered only minimal surprise when Lily took a seat beside her.

Hey, she said. Your baby broke down again?

Lily pecked Suzannah’s cheek with a kiss. "And I left my cell phone at work. Can I use the shop phone?"

Course.

Lily nudged her friend in the side, nodding toward the preacher. Who’s the guy?

Suzannah hooked her fingers for quotation marks. ‘Andy.’

The man’s voice was inescapable, and Lily put her quest on hold to listen to him.

Trust me; I used to hate street preachers. Anyone who even smelled of Christian persuasion and they were on my black list...

Suzannah blew smoke in the preacher’s direction, muttering, Today is the first time I ever regretted being a smoker.

Lily glanced at the collection of cigarette butts on the pavement around Suzannah’s boots.

Suzannah caught her friend’s stare and gave a husky laugh. "Hey, my faith is valid to me, okay? No one, and especially no one called Andy, is going to change that. I can’t believe you grew up around this stuff. All love to your parents, Lil, but the smartest thing you ever did was ditch the Christian scene. C’mon. Jesus saved the world? Hella job he did."

Lily shrugged, leaning back. The evangelist’s message pushed higher and louder still, forcing a lull in their conversation.

Meeting God does not mean that everything bad in your life disappears, or that you transform into some ultra-person. There are things in your life that remain unchanged, and unchangeable: a disability, for example, or a dissolved marriage. And if I were here to do a sales pitch about Christianity I’d say that my problem with alcohol has gone. But, the truth is that I pray and I struggle. And, sometimes I drink.

Suzannah made a contemptuous noise. Christianity is for people who are too scared to try anything real. They’re not offering anything like what I’ve got.

Lily chewed the inside of her cheek. "So, what have you got?"

Suzannah arched her eyebrows. She lit another cigarette, cupping the lighter flame.

Lily shook her head quickly. I’m not being contentious. I’m asking.

What have I got? Control over my own life, for one thing. No strings attached. It seems to me everything a Christian does is motivated by guilt or some form of duty.

Lily took in at the preacher and the African-American girl sitting on her crate. They don’t look so guilty to me. Put it this way. Did you choose Wicca, or were you led into it?

Suzannah squinted, her icy blue irises on full wattage. My mother didn’t ‘lead’ me into anything. She opened my eyes to the only truth that exists: the deity within us. How can that be perceived as wrong? And, yes, that was a rhetorical question. I wasn’t any more brainwashed than you were, Lil. I made a conscious choice to embrace my faith, and you made a conscious choice to ditch yours.

Okay. I’m just saying that from where I sit, your upbringing hasn’t exactly made you open-minded about Christianity. So, I’ll take your spiritual guidance with a grain of salt, Lily smiled. She checked her watch. I should go. Can I use the phone?

They both stood and Suzannah indicated over her shoulder, cigarette smoke curling from one nostril like a dirty gymnast ribbon. That ‘freedom’ you think you see in them? You make it up as you go in life. And, anyway, you only need to look at what happened with Danny to know that Christianity is just a bullshit placebo.

She planed her hands, making the cigarette bounce when she spoke. Bullshit.

Danny - the dormant place.

He was scared of dying, she murmured. Who wouldn’t be scared, especially at fifteen? C’mon.

He had cancer. He was always going to die, Suzannah said, frankly. It was the thought of the afterlife that freaked him out. You’re the one who told me! You were there with him at the end. He had fear written all over him, like Heaven was about as feasible as the existence of Santa Clause.



Curtis Sloane followed Lily as they made their way through the busy Santa Monica farmers market. He felt like a private detective, catching the odd word as his partner chatted with vendors, all five-foot-nine of elegance with a pair of aviator sunglasses settled on her head.

California sunshine invited itself everywhere. Nearby, a teenage boy was busking on a saxophone. A dance of people went by on roller blades. A few paunchy holidaymakers turned produce in their hands, sporting neon colored visors and wearing half-buttoned shirts. As if they had something worth displaying.

At the next stall Lily stopped by, the woman who tended it was Chinese. Lily attempted the Chinese greeting she had learned during the previous market visit and finished by laughing at herself and giving one earlobe a self-conscious tweak. There she was, with dimples and no makeup and having nothing to hide; so un-Los Angeles, the city of superficial angels.

That’s her appeal, Curtis thought. She has no idea that she is appealing.

Admittedly, Lily’s build was only average. He had had girlfriends much slimmer. Above all, what drew him like a moth to the flame was Lily’s implicit faith in him; to lead, to protect, and to know best: the look in her eyes that said wherever she followed him, she would be safe.

Their friends could never understand their relational peace. He realized that, on paper, his and Lily’s relationship was based on a strange polarity that shouldn’t have worked: Lily employed as a special needs carer and training to become a teacher while he himself worked in the fitness industry. Yet, somehow, it had never been an issue. There had always been questions, and envious probing from friends: You really don’t fight about this or that? And they owned it proudly; that their relationship really was how it appeared to be.

The only sizable arguments they had had during their twelve-year relationship involved money. Adopted by a couple from the war generation, Lily held to the rule ‘spend a little, save a little’: whereas Curtis believed that money existed to be spent. He’d curbed his spending habits long enough to go halves with Lily on the down payment of their first home. Lily was so proud that he’d managed it. And, he liked the way he looked - in her eyes.

Shopping stowed in the Honda RX8, a smile held onto Lily’s mouth as she chatted from the passenger seat. Do you remember that girl from last year who cornered you at the spring formal? She saw me putting up your personal trainer fliers on campus yesterday and she goes, ‘How personal does his training get?’

Curtis sent the shift into second gear. That’s the point where you scratched out my cell-phone number, right?

Lily

Lily appraised him with a lingering sweep of her eyes, taking in his natural tan and his brown hair flecked blonde by the sun. He had cheese-cutter cheekbones and a rogue’s twist of his lips when he smiled. Lily knew the effect that Curtis’s smile had on people. She had witnessed it countless times. His smile made something of them; as if, simply by virtue of having gained his smile in reaction, that individual’s own popularity had increased.

I almost scratched the number, she admitted. I know you have to beat them back with sticks, but you may have to resort to using small trees soon.

Curtis grinned, switching lanes with a duck of his eyes at the rear-view mirror. Hey, I forgot to tell you, the mechanic rang first thing this morning. Your car will be ready for pickup tomorrow. I told the guy there was an extra fifty bucks in it for him if he did a lax job. I know it was a sweet sixteenth present from your Dad, Lil, but it’s time that car went to a better place.

He adjusted the air conditioning. There was a protracted silence and he glanced across at Lily. She stared out of the passenger window with her chin in her hand.

I was kidding, he said.

Lily turned and touched Curtis’s thigh. Oh, no, I’m not being like that. When you said ‘a better place’ it reminded me of yesterday. When I went to Suz’s shop, a guy was street preaching there.

She paused, her eyebrows flinching downward. "It was weird. It was interesting which is why it was weird. I haven’t thought about any of that stuff - religious stuff - since..."

Curtis

As Curtis slowed the RX8 for an intersection, he watched his partner’s face. It left a sudden, airy gap in his throat, hearing things that he had never heard Lily speak before. He peeled his fingers one at a time off the steering wheel in a miniature Mexican wave and rested each one down again. Religion? He thought. ‘Since’? Since when?

Their eyes met. Lily developed a kind of frown-smile. What?

Curtis shrugged one shoulder. I was just listening.

There was relative quiet in the car on the drive to Palms: a quiet that was unfamiliar to Curtis and one he felt unsure of breaching. Endless look-alike apartment blocks rolled by in the middle-income suburb of Palms, as if the earth itself had shaken up pieces from a real estate board game and decided glamorous upgrades were unnecessary. Gone were the pre-war era homes in favor of duplexes and triplexes, with few backyards and little or no distinguishing features to tell the buildings apart. The condos and apartments soon thinned out to make way for family homes.

Curtis kept his eyes on the sway of Lily’s back-length brown hair as they climbed the front steps of the Carson’s two-storeyed home. He tolerated the Carson family for Lily’s sake. He figured that it was a similar equation for the Carson’s, in return.

Lily carried a bag of market produce in one hand and a boxed gift in the other. The front door had been left ajar in expectation of their arrival and they walked the long, yolk-colored hallway to the kitchen. Bubbling sounded from the stovetop.

When they entered the kitchen, Grace was trying the lid of a jar, which she handed to her biological daughter, Dana, saying, Your wrists are younger than mine.

A chorus of greetings mingled and Grace approached. She was tall and effortlessly attractive, her hair a pale honey color: either entirely natural or entirely from a bottle, Curtis had never settled on which. Either way, time had been kind to Grace Carson. Her heyday was not hard to imagine.

Oh, good, you brought the vegetables, she said, taking the bag from Lily and delivering a kiss. You two want something to drink? Curtis?

Anything alcoholic would be great.

Grace sent him a smile. Not all Episcopalians drink, you know.

Sorry. Curtis nodded, closing his eyes in feigned prayer. Dear God, lay it on their hearts to start buying beer. Amen.

It was a patter they had worked out years before, and they all laughed at the joke like it wasn’t old. It was his one effort at fitting in, and Lily’s eyes hung onto him, full and bright, singling him out.

Dana handed the opened jar to her mother. She looked like a brunette from a clothing catalogue: possessing a pleasant face under perfectly kept eyebrows. She wore dress pants and a crisp white blouse as if she had just been excused from a business meeting.

Lily neared her sister and extended the gift from behind her back. It’s not much, but happy birthday.

She crossed her arms, leaning on them somehow. "Seems like we’re closing the five year gap between us, you know? You want so badly to grow up and suddenly you realise it’s not just other people that get older."

She laughed, giving a geeky little intake of breath at the corners of her mouth. Dana nodded, tapping the gift. I - thanks for this - I never did buy into the whole anti-aging culture, though, so being thirty-three isn’t the end of the world.

Lily was smiling with the remains of her previous smile, and she perked it up with the push of a point being missed. Looking on, Curtis thought, it’s like the air between the two sisters holds permission, but Lily has never managed to locate it.

He soon withdrew to the living room. They were old fashioned that way, women-only in the kitchen. He received a perfunctory nod from Lily’s father, Beau, and found himself a gardening magazine to read. Beau poured over a crossword book. To his left, Dana’s five year old daughter was dangling her doll inside a vase and chatting to herself.

Curtis glanced up from an article on hot-house vegetation as Dana’s husband entered the room from the hallway. He could predict what he and Phillip Elderman would talk about. It was the same every time: convivial, a duty. We’re still in the same jobs. Our respective sports teams are on-form. Today’s lunch will set us up for a week.

Time wore on and Lily eventually slipped into the room. She perched on the arm of her father’s chair as Beau ran his index finger down the crossword page.

Montana, Lily said softly to her father. Thirty-seven down. It’s Montana.

Beau filled in the squares with a thin-skinned hand, blue veins standing out the size of earthworms. I should know my geography better, shouldn’t I?

Lily leaned in and kissed her father’s cheek. Looking on, Curtis knew that every time Lily kissed Beau, she kissed him to bring him back. The Alzheimer’s was slowly becoming more noticeable. It was one of the few things that made Lily cry.

Lunchtime presently came and went. Everyone gathered in the living room to eat birthday cake. Curtis had a slice with the blue icing letters birt on it. Megan sat beside him, her five-year-old legs no longer than the sofa squabs. She addressed him repeatedly with, Knock, knock!

I should have mastered a way of not being annoyed by this, Curtis thought, sending his partner a quick, harassed smile.

Lily put down her plate and called out, Meg! Scoot over here, baby. I feel like braiding your hair.

Grace and Dana had a photo album shared between their laps. Beau frequently looked up from his crossword book, saying, What’s another word for...?

Lily sat on the floor, her head resting back on her mother’s thigh while she braided Megan’s hair. Curtis didn’t know what he felt, witnessing those casual acts of devotion, so different to the culture of his own family.

Lily was staring at the framed needlework on the wall above the television. It had been there for as long as Curtis could remember: birds with ribbons in their beaks at the cross-stitched corners and the central words, Thou keepest him in perfect peace whose mind stayeth on Thee. He knew that Lily had something like a black book in her head. She felt that she owed these people everything.

Curtis didn’t like it, the sheer depth of it. And he’d found that he couldn’t change it.

L

Lily caught her partner’s stare. The same look he had in the car, she thought. What is that?

The memories came flooding back at the sight of the old cross-stitch on the wall: memories of singing ‘Father Abraham Had Many Sons’ in Sunday School and of wearing a sticky-tape beard as one of the three wise men in the nativity play.

But… that was then. She smiled at Curtis and looked over her shoulder at the photo album on Grace’s lap. There was a huge section in it that had nothing to do with her memories. Then, it happened on one page: her chubby three-year-old self suddenly posing along with the Carson family. It made her feel warm and yet, somehow, still estranged.

She saw a small, tea-stain colored photograph of two women tucked into the binding of the album, and she turned to face her mother with the nickname on her lips that had been a lifeline all those years ago. Nanny Grace, who are they? I’ve never seen that photo before.

Dana and Grace exchanged the barest glance. Grace pointed out the older woman. Uh, this is Betty, a friend of mine from my early nursing days in Pasadena. And, this... she paused, a finger hovering over the second face, This is her daughter, Alexis.

Lily lifted a hand for the photo. She let her eyes trace the shadows and the sunshine in both faces, rubbing a pensive finger along her lower lip. Did I ever meet Alexis?

No, honey, you didn’t, Grace said.

Her face is kind of familiar to me. I just can’t place it.

Grace closed the album, saying nothing further. Lily bunched her lips dubiously to one side, and she craned to address her sister. Did you know them?

Dana simply shook her head.

Afternoon dimmed into early evening and the family gradually disbanded until Grace and Beau sat alone in lamplight. They faced one another over a chessboard.

I’m pretty sure that lasagne was the best you’ve ever made, Beau said, moving his remaining knight.

Good, Grace smiled. By the way, did I see Lily doling out your medication before she left?

Mm, she did. Beau gazed at the collection of photo frames on the facing wall. Who would have thought that she and Dana would come to look so alike, not even being related? Never ceases to amaze me.

The ladies were saying the same thing during Bible study, yesterday, Grace said. She used her pawn to take Beau’s bishop and set the piece down by her elbow in its slow-growing pile of victory. You’re up.

Gracie, she’s getting more and more like Alexis.

Grace absently pressed her fingertip to the bishop’s plastic mitre. I know.

Someday soon, it’ll be more than the photograph she wants to know about.

Well, honey, what? Could you do it? She shook her head. It would fall to me as her mother and I’m telling you right now, I simply cannot do it.

The living room was swallowed by a spell of silence. Beau made a castling move. She thinks it seems ungrateful to ask, he said, quietly. She should be told about the arrangement, and she should be told someday soon. That’s my opinion.

Grace frowned into the well of her hand. Her Queen couldn’t be spared either way.

She lapsed back in her armchair, saying, Honey, if we gave Lily even a part of the picture she’d want the whole of it, and rightly so. Now... while we usually find middle ground about the children, this point stays. Lily will never know about the arrangement. I don’t think either of us could imagine the complete damage to Lily if she found out what makes up her DNA.

Chapter 2

Curtis opened an envelope with the tip of his keys and made his way, reading, into the house. Boxes were scattered around the hardwood floor entrance. Styrofoam cubes crunched beneath his shoes. He heard a voice coming from the master bedroom and he followed it to find Lily splayed on the master bed, the phone to her ear. Their eyes met: blue and brown celebrating.

So, we thought Wednesday, Lily was saying. Curtis stripped off his jacket and moved onto the bed. Lily pulled the phone away from her mouth to kiss him. Wednesday for the house warming, right?

Curtis nodded and settled on his haunches to read the mail.

L

Lily watched as Curtis reached the last envelope in the pile. He stared at it for a moment and dropped it, cupped one hand around the other and popped one of his knuckles.

Knuckle cracking. Bad sign, she thought, and said into the phone, I’ll have to call you back. Okay, bye.

She tossed the phone aside and reached out to claim Curtis’s face, drawing a kiss from him. There was a definite flatness to it from his side. He scuffed a hand through his brown-blonde hair.

Guess who has started getting Mom to write the address? he said. Like that makes it easier to read.

I’ll never understand why they won’t hold your furniture for free. They’re your parents! And they don’t even use the third garage.

Well... when did you expect Gary to start giving hand-outs? Or for me to start accepting them, for that matter?

It had been that way for as long as Lily had known her partner, his referring to his father as ‘Gary’ and never as ‘Dad’.

I only agreed to store it there when Mom offered it free of charge, he said. But you know how it is when Gary gets wind of something that could make him some green. I could send it all to commercial storage...

But, your accounts read like a sinking ship, Lily said. I guess it could be worse. He could be charging a lot more.

"I’ll let you look on the positive side, I’m way past it," he said.

Watching him closely, Lily said, Hey, and the word was a gentle summons. Curtis leaned in. They kissed slowly, hands holding faces, and their bodies folding back onto the pillows. It was some time before Curtis broke the kissing, propping himself on one elbow.

Lily said, I handed in my paper for ‘Stigma and Society’ today.

Oh, that’s the lecturer who sends you into overtime with the nail biting?

Right. But! Lily hoisted one thumb, showing a miniscule growth of nail. Check this bad boy out.

C

He watched Lily, her dimples breaking out like small caves, and he wanted to keep them going. I got the pay rise, he said.

Lily frowned at him, moving her head backward like she was finding a different way to see him. What? No way. Babe, that’s just...

They joined hands in the air, their fingers forming a row of X’s and Curtis was about to speak when the bedside phone rang. He rolled his eyes and fell back on the pillows like a man slain. Lily slipped across the bed to answer it. As she chatted, Curtis moved closer to her and began a kissing trail down the pillar of her neck.

After she hung up, she pegged his shirt between finger and thumb, saying, What am I going to do with you?

I’ve got a few ideas, now you mention it, he mumbled against her throat. Christen the bedroom, shall we?

L

Her partner was smiling playfully, bearing down on his palms. She hated killing the moment.

Um, that was Nanny Grace. She sprained her wrist handling boxes trying to set up for the yard sale tomorrow.

Curtis sobered instantly. He moved back.

I’ll be two hours max, Lily promised. I’ll be back in time to make dinner. And unplug the phone.

She tugged at her partner’s shirt, drawing him back. C’mon. The sooner I go, the sooner I come back. Okay? She kissed him again, that delicious, almost paper-tearing sound of a solid kiss. Meanwhile, how about this christening?

Relinquishing the grudge, Curtis lowered his face into Lily’s neck and he began to pepper her skin with kisses as she made her limbs a nest around him. When the phone rang again, Curtis froze where he was, just short of Lily’s face. She didn’t move. The ringing sounded for five tones and the fax mechanism cut in.

Lily frowned at her partner. She sat up and they leaned across simultaneously to watch a piece of paper shuffle into the room. She loved the old machine, the way it had struggled against modernity and lost. Curtis peered over Lily’s shoulder and they both read:

Santa Monica Community Church

1300 Arizona Ave. Sunday mornings 10am

- All welcome -

Found this slipped under the shop door. ‘Andy’ I presume. Smart-ass! Did he somehow miss the store’s Wiccan symbolism? Suz x



Lily found her mother seated at the kitchen table, obscured beyond cardboard boxes. Grace was holding an ice pack against her wrist. They hugged one another and Lily crouched, peeking beneath the ice pack.

Nanny Grace, it’s pretty swollen, she said. I’ll take you to a duty doctor.

No, no, Grace said, with the measured calm of an ex-triage nurse. "The aspirin will kick in soon. What I do want you to do is take those last three boxes to the garage. And, the biggest one there is yours. Take it with you when you go."

Lily made her way to the largest box on the table. She folded back the cardboard flaps and found history everywhere inside.

Oh my God, she said, reaching in. Her hand emerged with a shoebox, the word photos scribbled on the box lid. She went to where Grace sat and popped the top so that they could begin individual searches through the glossy selection.

Not far into her own search, Lily held up a photograph.