24. Jaxson
24
Jaxson
M y two-month-old nephew could have intimidated my father’s guest for all that he folded and kissed my father’s ass before I’d barely said a sentence to him. But that’s because despite my father doing all he can to keep the Sovereignty in irrelevancy with his backward and outdated views, he still has connections. He still has clout. He can still pull a few strings to get people out of a bind when he needs to. Hell, just him taking pictures with celebrities still creates some stirs in the online sphere.
So there was nothing my father’s guest wasn’t willing to do, not do, say, or not say to curry his favor and get him out the legal and domestic binds he had gotten himself into. The ones that were causing him the most trouble anyway. And he already had the understanding that the ones that weren’t causing him trouble would become trouble if he stepped out of line. That if he stepped too far out of line, he’d find himself the victim of an unfortunate accident. Car crashes are easy, but not my favorite or most efficient. I prefer allergic reactions or complications from routine medical procedures. Because they happen all the time and are damn hard to prove foul play .
By the time I’ve done my part and sat through the long recorded-and-for-show reconciliation and then listened to my father lecture everyone about “what needs to be done,” I’m ready to hop back on an early flight to Macon. But if I’m seen rushing back, it may make my father suspicious and send his spies to see what I’m up to. Or worse, it’ll make his narcissism flare and have him order me to come back but longer or even to abandon the supposed mission from the Supreme Force altogether.
It’s only been two days and already, I miss Lauressa. It’s one thing to call her, have her answer, and hear her voice, no matter how grudgingly and coldly she responds to me. But it’s a completely different thing to watch her on my monitors through the camera feed. To visit her apartment on a whim. To send my men to bring her to me.
I was tempted to log into the feed to see what she was up to, but it’s too risky to do while in Chicago. In the seat of the Oracle’s power. I don’t want him to know what I’m really up to.
With nothing to do and nowhere to go I decide to visit Jessie and Deaccan while Jessie’s husband is at work. It seems I’m not the only one who had that idea because it’s not Jessie who opens the door.
It’s Magdalene. Without one of her blonde wigs on. They’re exorbitantly expensive, but only because they’re made out of the finest quality human hair and expertly dyed to resemble natural blonde. All to cover and hide her natural auburn red hair because red hair is the mark of a temptress said some Oracle a hundred years ago.
“Jaxson,” she says, face neutral but not unpleasant which is the nicest expression the woman is ever going to send my way .
“Magdalene,” I return.
“Jaxson,” Jessie says, intervening. “I didn’t know you were coming by. We were just getting ready to leave. Would you like to join us?” Jessie frowns, noticing the half healed cut on my hand from Halloween. “What happened to your hand?”
“Join you where?” I ask, ignoring her last question and fully expecting to decline and visit Jessie tomorrow.
“To um…” Jessie looks at Magdalene whose neutral expression at me has shifted to one of annoyance. If not anger.
“We’re going to see Candace’s grave,” she snaps.
I pause, taken by surprise but hoping it comes across as me being contemplative instead. If there’s one thing all three of us agree on, it’s that we don’t talk about Candace, let alone visit her grave. So why…
“It’s November 19 th .” Jessie explains.
Candace’s birthday. If there’s any day worth remembering her, it’s this one.
“So…” Jessie trails off.
I try not to remember Candace most of the time, let alone do something like go to her grave. And if I did want to go, Magdalene is the last person I want to do it with. I’m about to decline when Jessie speaks again.
“I got flowers. From her garden at the altar. Marigolds. They were her favorite remember? Because they attracted the butterflies? I think she’d like it if butterflies visited her.”
Jessie’s eagerness never fails to soften me.
“Fine,” I state .
Magdalene looks neither pleased nor displeased. Just picks up the carton of supplies for the grave and shoves them into my chest. “Here. Carry the flowers to the car.”
I glare at her and then turn to do so without saying anything.
Magdalene insists on driving, and I don’t argue as I sit in the passenger seat while Jessie rides in the back. Normally, it would be against doctrine to be seen riding in the front seat with a woman I wasn’t at least dating. But most people appreciate the fact that Magdalene and I may as well be family for all the fact that we can’t stand each other.
We’re silent during the thirty minute drive and continue to be silent as we walk from the car to the grave.
Candance’s grave is a black granite and marble slanted headstone with her name in large letters and a picture of her to the left. Both of the flower cups are downturned. When Magdalene and I pull them up, the insides are filled with dirt and old green foam, the remains of the last arrangement that was put here the last time anyone was at this grave, which may very well have been over a decade ago.
Once Magdalene and I clean out the cups, Jessie gets to work arranging the flowers since she’s the only one of us who picked up Candace’s green thumb. Magdalene polishes the headstone in the meantime while I keep an eye on Deaccan.
Once the headstone is polished and the flowers are arranged, the three of us stand in front of the stone. All three of us, each so different from one another. All influenced and raised by the same woman. My full blooded older sister by twenty years. Jessie’s aunt. The woman who picked Magdalene up off the corner and was her mother in everything but name and legality. All of our mothers really, seeing as it’s standard practice to dump the youngest children on the nearest older woman in the family who wasn’t married. I was certainly with Candace more than I ever was with my mother.
As far as I’m concerned, people come and go. Death is just another thing. I’m not going to go out of my way to kill anyone who hasn’t crossed me in some unforgiveable way. But I’m also not so emotionally attached to most people I know that I would be upset that they died, even twenty years ago.
But Candace dying? At only thirty-six? From an allergic reaction to a routine steroid shot that she’d been taking for two decades because of a pelvic injury she got as a teen? That was devastating. Even more devastating because it wasn’t an accident. Of course, I didn’t learn that until years later. I was well on the path toward my goal of becoming my father’s heir by then. That didn’t mean I wasn’t still terribly na?ve about the lengths people would go to in order to hold onto power. The lengths I would need to be willing to go to.
Despite the fact that it was the Sovereignty that killed her, that it was my father who gave the order to kill his own daughter, they made a big show of her funeral. Full of rousing speeches and lectures of why we shouldn’t grieve because she was back with the Supreme Force. And that the Supreme Force ultimately allowed it. That they would investigate her death because Candace hadn’t been sick. She was young and healthy. Vegan. Worked out five times a week, took martial arts, and could probably fight my father’s entire security singlehandedly. Because of course the Sovereignty would never pass up an opportunity to imply that this unseen enemy was after us and wanted to see all of humanity destroyed. Even I, having never believed a word of Sovereignty lore and doctrine, was almost fooled by it.
Jessie adjusts Deaccan’s stroller and sets it in front of the grave.
“Hey, Candace,” she says. “I know I haven’t been here in… too long. But I just wanted you to meet your great nephew on your birthday. Yeah. That means I finally got married. For a while, people joked I was going to end up like you. Not that that would have been a bad thing. Anyway, I named him after you… sort of. I was playing with your name. Because there’s no masculine form of it. So I just rearranged the letters and got Deaccan.” Jessie chokes back a sob at this point. “I wish you could have met him.”
Magdalene reaches over and grabs Jessie’s hand.
“Sorry,” Jessie said. “I know I shouldn’t…”
Both Magdalene and I know exactly what we should and shouldn’t do, but neither of us is going to tell Jessie that nor are we telling anyone else. The same way I didn’t care about the stupid stigma against formula. The same way Magdalene is pretending she doesn’t know that the thawed breast milk Jessie took out the fridge and packed for this trip is just formula.
“Do either of you want to say anything?” Jessie asks.
“Well, I am like you,” Magdalene jokes. “Thirty-six and unmarried. But the Oracle says I’m married to the Supreme Force. That I serve a higher purpose to train and look after the women of the Sovereignty as High Priestess. So… I don’t mind.”
Jessie laughs and says, “I’m sure you’ll find a husband one of these days. ”
“Supreme Force bless his soul whoever it is,” I mutter.
Magdalene curses at me in what sounds like Mandarin. At least, I’m assuming it’s a curse. Mandarin isn’t one of the languages I learned.
Jessie hits me on my arm. “Don’t start with Magdalene today. Besides, don’t speak too soon. It’s not too late for the Oracle to arrange the two of you to get married after all these years since you’re still lacking a wife, Jaxson.”
“I’d sooner die,” Magdalene says.
“The feeling is mutual,” I agree.
“Well, that’s one thing you both agree on,” Jessie says optimistically.
“Are we ready to go?” Magdalene asks.
“Jaxson hasn’t said anything,” Jessie says.
“I have nothing to say,” I state.
“Jaxson,” Jessie says, trying and failing to sound intimidating.
I stare down at the grave. It feels stupid to be talking to a grave. Whatever it was that made Candace who she was isn’t there. It’s just the remains of whatever it was that made her. Dust. Bones. I may as well talk to the tree behind us.
I decide to keep it simple.
“Rest in peace. Supreme Force knows we didn’t give you any,” I say.
“Any rest? Or any peace?” Magdalene asks.
“Both,” I say, making both women to giggle.
“We didn’t, did we?” Jessie asks. “Remember when we snuck out to that party? ”
“You snuck out to that party,” I correct. “I went to make sure you didn’t get assaulted or murdered.”
“I went because I didn’t trust him to make sure of it,” Magdalene added. Then, “We almost got arrested.”
“The Oracle, your mom, and mine would have murdered us if they’d found out. I have no idea how Candace came and got us, and they didn’t,” Jessie says.
“Well, you know Candace. She was very shrewd and a good judge of character,” I say.
Except for that one time. When she confided in our mother the truth. That she too thought all this was a scam, and she was planning to leave. My mother told our father
“You should visit your mother while you’re here, Jaxson,” Jessie says. “I need to feed Deaccan before we get going anyway.”
My mother can rot in hell for all I care about her or her grave, but I’d scandalize Magdalene and Jessie if I said that because honor thy mother and all that. It makes me miss Lauressa all the more. I could say that to her, and she’d just laugh and ask what the woman did to make me hate her.
While Magdalene goes with Jessie to feed Deaccan, I look for my mother’s grave. The only reason I find it so quickly is that the Sovereignty has purchased the plot for my father, his wife, his conduits, and his children. So it’s only a matter walking a few yards in either direction before I come across it.
Nancy Graham.
Her headstone is much like my sister’s. No one has been to it in years. It needs polishing. New Flowers. But I don’t care enough about my mother to do any of that. I don’t care about her at all. I hated her for years before she died. Which is why it was so easy when I found out that it was her that switched out Candace’s steroid. That she told Candace to go upstairs and sleep it off when she claimed to feel lightheaded. That she didn’t check on her for hours until she sent Magdalene to go wake her for dinner. When I found out all that, that’s why it was so easy to spike my mother’s tea with a paraphyletic agent and then drown her in the swimming pool.
“I hope you’re rotting in hell if there is one,” I say, despite my early thoughts about it being stupid to talk to a grave. “And if there is a hell, when I get sent there, I hope the devil lets me live out the rest of eternity tormenting you.”
God, I can’t wait to get out of Chicago and see Lauressa again. To feel her lips against mine. To feel her body against mine. To feel it melt against me like putty despite the fact that her mind is in conflict over it. Despite the fact that she wants to fight me but can’t overpower me or can’t bring herself to because she can’t admit that part of her wants me too.
Our phone call later tonight can’t come soon enough.
“What are you really doing down in Georgia?” Magdalene asks, coming up behind me and interrupting my musing about Lauressa.
It’s an irritating interruption, but an interruption I expected eventually from Magdalene.
“What I tell you depends on what you’ve been told I’m doing down there,” I state.
“That you’re learning about the people down there and what they need to establish an altar. ”
“Then that’s what I’m doing.”
“You and I both know that there’s no way you’re going to leave Chicago to live in some nowhere town to establish an altar.”
“You’re supposed to take a Sovereign at their word, Magdalene,” I remind.
“No one takes anyone at their word in this place, and you know it,” Magdalene says. Then she takes a step closer to me and hisses, “I swear to the Supreme Force if you’re doing anything that endangers the Sovereignty, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Magdalene?”
I don’t need to say the rest. She’ll tell my father? Think he’ll believe her over me just because he’s planning to make her his conduit while she’s still young and pretty for now? Magdalene knows the answer to that. He wouldn’t. Not over one of his only two sons.
“I’d find a way. If you’re endangering the Sovereignty,” Magdalene warns.
It’s too bad Magdalene really buys into this bullshit and is so devoted to my father. If she weren’t gunning for conduit so she can have an heir in the running for Oracle, she’d make a valuable tool and ally. I need people devoted to the Sovereignty on my side regardless of if I disagree with why they’re devoted.
“I know you doubt my sincerity, Magdalene. But rest assured. I’m as devoted to the Sovereignty as you are,” I say, and that’s all I say.
My father isn’t omnipotent or omniscient. But he has a terrifying information network in Chicago. One that I’ve been careful to make sure only takes back to him what I want taken back to him when it comes to me. The last thing I need is Magdalene taking something back to him while she has his ear.
“Don’t worry. I don’t plan to take too long about it. I’ll be back in Chicago to be the bane of your existence in no time,” I add when she says nothing.
“I don’t doubt it,” she says before heading back to the care.
I make a mental note to get a spy into her inner circle because I get the feeling Magdalene is up to much more than just campaigning to be the next conduit to my father.