Joe Umland
May 20, 2022 7:20 PM
Things Fall Apart by Joe Umland
So much, Joe thought vaguely, for getting a life.It wasn't was the right thing to think of, of course. If he had said that out loud in the wake of Julian's announcement, he wouldn't have blamed anyone in the room for hitting him. It wasn't even his main concern, really. It was just, in the face of the disaster which was spreading out in front of him, the only thought which retained the capacity to form; all his other neurons seemed to have frozen in place, or else just left his head entirely to go hide.
Looking around the room, he thought he wasn't the only one who felt that way. His brother Stephen and their parents all looked equally stunned, unable or afraid to speak or move. John had been leaning against the fireplace instead of sitting, and he immediately responded by jerking upright and into motion: he began to pace back and forth behind the sofa, his lips moving soundlessly as he apparently decided it was a great time to start saying the Rosary. William, of all people, was staring at Julian white-faced, looking as shocked as if she had just run him through with a knife to the back when he'd thought he was getting a hug. Before Joe could assess how much of a problem that was, though, his brother Paul recovered the ability to speak, and used it in emphatic fashion.
"Why the ---- are you looking at her like that?" he demanded, glaring at their brother-in-law. On his knee, one of his hands had already closed into a fist; Joe automatically reached for his wand. If Paul lost his head enough to take a swing at William, William would almost certainly retaliate magically, and Paul would therefore need backup. He managed to catch Stephen's eye, and Stephen nodded slightly, agreeing to also provide backup as needed. Stephen was a Healer, used to operating under pressure and bound by certain codes, so Joe thought he could trust him not to get...carried away, if it came to that.... "It's not like you're ----ing surprised!"
"Actually, he probably is," Julian said coolly, taking a sip of her tea. She alone was really composed. On one level, that was fair enough - she was the one who had just thrown a metaphorical grenade into the floor in front of them all, apparently including her husband. On another level, though - "I think he thought that I'd agreed to tell you all the same lie we're going to try to sell to the newspapers."
The newspapers. Oh, God. The newspapers. Joe, for one wild moment, wished he could die in the night. Even if they formally accepted the story -
How? he asked Julian silently, a trickle of betrayal making its way through the numb shock which had followed her announcement. How did I miss this? How did I not know what was coming? He clearly didn't just tell you about this, so why didn't you tell me?
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Joe Umland
Things Fall Apart
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Joe Umland
May 29, 2022 6:11 PM
Retrospect by Joe Umland
Joe had known, of course, that his sister's marriage was functionally over for a long time. In fact, he thought he might have known it for longer than she had, based on the best estimates he could make about how long she'd been slipping around with Teddy Archer. Either way, though, William and Julian had been no more than actors - talented actors, no doubt, but actors still - at least since George's first birthday, if not a little earlier. Surely not as far back as the second time Julian had left, though -No, he didn't think things had completely snapped until...a good while, even, after Julian had come back from Palm Springs, where William had packed her off for a rest cure after she started having that postpartum thing again after George was born. It hadn't been as bad as the first time, but still - she'd been obviously enough not herself that William had finally had enough of dealing with her and had decided to stick her on a beach in the States with a hired nurse and hope for the best. Joe, more than a little skeptical, had possibly earned his first grey hairs trying to run back and forth between Ontario and godforsaken Florida all while keeping their parents and brothers all as far out of the loop as possible and dealing with Cecily's inability to understand anything except that her parents apparently couldn't be bothered with her anymore. That last one had doubled the difficulty of everything else, especially since Cecily had by then developed her extremely annoying habit of running everything anyone told her by John at the first opportunity.....
Somehow, though, he had kept all that under a modicum of control, and when Julian had come back, at first it had seemed like everything might be fine again. For a while, in fact, it really had seemed like the way it had been before, and after William had gotten that promotion...in retrospect, Joe guessed it had been fairly stupid of him to not realize sooner that 'they're both overusing stimulants worse than John did with his dissertation' was the most - if not only - logical explanation for how and why they had seemed so much happier and more energetic, but at the time, he'd just been glad to have fewer problems to iron out.
Until, of course. There was always an until. Here, until it had all started to unravel again: Julian mixing downers with her uppers just to sleep, William not coming home for days at a time, that day Joe had been going over something with Marie-Claude and had realized that neither his sister nor his brother-in-law had even made a passing remark about how Cecily's lessons were going in weeks -
Probably that had been the real end, even before Julian had been one of the last in Ontario to find out about William's penchant for blondes ten years her junior. After that - well, the fighting had mostly stopped. Mostly. They had remained unstoppably charming and attractive in public. Joe had felt sorry for his sister - but they had all been distinctly unenthusiastic about her marriage from the start, so she couldn't really blame anyone but herself for how her bed was made, or how she now had to lie in it. Julian must have agreed, because she'd not said a word...until today, when she had invited them all over for tea, only to surprise them all by having a bassinet in the middle of the room.
"You know how it is, everyone's been wondering for years if I would take in as I was taken in," Julian had said in an impossibly brittle voice. "Though I expect even my reputation could have survived if I just explained that this one happens to be the result of one of my husband's...indiscretions." And then, as they had all stared at her in shock, she'd added, "His name's - Kenneth, I think you said, William? I suppose it'll do."
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Joe Umland
Retrospect
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Joe Umland
May 29, 2022 7:13 PM
Reaction by Joe Umland
OOC: Warnings, this one gets a bit violent. BIC:
"You said," William managed, barely moving his lips. "We agreed - "
"I didn't agree to anything except allowing him in the house," Julian said. "You told me that you'd rather we also not tell my family that he's yours - "
"And you said 'okay.'"
Julian shrugged. "Just letting you know I understood what you meant. Not that I was going to humor you." With a flick of her eyelashes, she seemed to dismiss her husband and looked back at the rest of them. "You all - " she nodded to Stephen and Paul and John - "can tell your wives whatever you like, though I wouldn't be surprised if they checked stories behind your backs," she said, as casually as if asking them to remind their wives when someone's birthday party was being held. "Assuming Delia's gotten over being terrified of Sammy, anyway."
William - now white and red at the same time, in a rather unappealing combination, finally recovered his voice. "You manipulative b - "
"You don't want to finish that sentence," Joe said sharply, recovering his grasp on the English language. Maybe William had been on the brink of offering a completely accurate assessment of his sister's conduct - but she was still his sister, and therefore, nobody talked about her like that. Especially not present company, especially not under current circumstances....
"Joe - Julian - " their mother protested, the tone she usually used to imply light rebuke mixed strangely with helplessness. "You mustn't - "
"I mustn't what, Mom?" Julian asked, putting her teacup down too hard, so that it rattled on the saucer and slopped some of the brew over the edge. "Am I not being forgiving enough for you? Not enough of a submissive little Catholic wife? I've spent ten years trying to be that, while he's done whatever he wanted, and sometimes I wish I was dead. I'm not you, Mom, and I'm sick and tired of - "
"Julian," their dad pleaded. "Ali, both of you, please - "
John, unnoticed, had continued pacing behind the sofa all this time, only to abruptly bring the rising argument to a halt by crossing the room in two steps and, without a word, seizing Julian's wrist. Slowly, apparently unaware of her muffled noise of pain or of them all staring at him or that there was anything unusual about this behavior, he put his rosary in her hand and closed her fingers around it before, still silently, going over to the teapot and lifting the lid, apparently checking to see if it was empty before replacing it to pour another cup of tea -
Or rather, to lift the teapot. This turned into an important distinction when, instead of tilting the pot toward a cup, John suddenly turned and slammed the teapot into William's head.
Someone - possibly Julian, possibly their mother - screamed as the china shattered, big, curved white and mint-green pieces flying in all directions. William fell like a bag of hammers in high gravity, and consequently, got kicked several times before Paul, shouting something Joe couldn't understand, was on his feet and trying to intervene, which finally allowed Joe to have the presence of mind to cast a shield charm before any more damage could be done to the person in the room who happened to have real power, and, at the moment, not a lot of reasons left not to use it against all of them -
Dear God, what am I going to do if he's dead, I don't know how to dispose of a body anyway, never mind a politically important one, what are we going to do, Julian, you've got to help me out this time, I don't know what -
Still on the floor, William groaned in pain and stirred a little, and Joe had to bite his lip to keep back a gasp of relief. It had never occurred to him, he realized, until this exact moment that he would, in fact,definitely, without even thinking about it, at least try to help one of his siblings cover up a murder, and realizing he probably wouldn't have to try it today, at least, after all felt about like what he imagined getting off the hook for one himself would feel like. John, still looking at the handle in his hand as though not quite sure what it was or what connection it had to why their brother-in-law's face was currently bleeding on the carpet, looked up suddenly, and that was when Joe realized the baby at the center of the problem had both completely slipped his mind and had, presumably in response to all the yelling and shouting and smashing, started screaming at the top of its miniature lungs.
John dropped the teapot handle and went to the bassinette. Julian stirred abruptly, as though she'd planned to stop him but then thought the better of it,, but John, not paying her any attention, picked the baby up and began...unless Joe was very much mistaken, began trying to comfort it.
"That was a big noise, wasn't it," he said apologetically - Joe had forgotten the odd way John had of addressing even newborns in much the same way he would if they'd been able to understand him, including apologizing for annoying or ignoring them. "Sorry about that - Kenneth, huh? That's a good name. It wasn't good for all of us to make so much noise around you. It's not your fault." He did look at Julian, then, briefly, before repeating, "No - it's not your fault."
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Joe Umland
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