Three Alumni Have A Tea Party on Alumni

Joe Umland

April 09, 2020 12:12 PM

Three Alumni Have A Tea Party by Joe Umland

OOC: Be warned, some discussion of where babies come from and related topics.

There was no question, of course, of finding out why they were here before the tea was poured. It did not matter that they all had things to do, or that Joe was concerned to find John present; questions of any import would have to wait, because there was a proper way to do things, the way they had been taught by their mother. Their mother was not present now, but the Proper Way had been so ingrained into the Umland siblings that they observed it out of sheer habit even in Alison’s absence.

Julian looked as pretty as ever in something apple-green and silky-looking, but Joe thought she also looked a little pale and tired, too, and slightly distracted as she flicked her eyes sideways toward their brother. “John, will you pour?” she asked.

Very proper, of course. There were any number of ways it could be determined which of them should have the honor of pouring the tea; today, Julian, as the hostess, seemed to have decided to default to the rule of antiquity. John picked up the large, mint-green-and-white-polka-dot china teapot and, scowling with concentration, performed the office, serving first Julian and then Joe - despite the fact that he was incapable of making tea for anyone but himself, due to tea made by John being unfit for human consumption, John took the business of serving tea properly very seriously. Julian, in her turn, deferred first rights to the milk jug to Joe, while John opted for a slice of lemon. The tea things here were rather daintier than most of the things which had graced the tea table at home (Joe had to stifle a grin at John’s expression as he wrestled with the silly tiny thing with its mint-and-polka-dots exterior and painted roses inside the rim, trying and seemingly failing to figure out how to grip the very thin handle with its very narrow opening), but the routines were still so familiar that it brought on a whole Proustian rush of feelings – specifically, of comfort, safety, home, basically. Joe was not sure about John – John had been very young when they had been adopted, but old enough to walk and talk and annoy people and, if Julian was to be believed, blow up the teakettle on at least one occasion – but Joe had no memory of a time where teatime hadn’t been an integral part of home life. One of his very early memories was of sitting on his dad’s knee, grabbing at the handle of Dad’s mug as Dad lifted it; another concerned when Mom had made some ceremony out of giving him the right to sit and have his own little, very diluted, cup at the table with the older ones.

“I hope I’m not keeping either you from anything very important,” said Julian. “But I have news I thought you both ought to know sooner rather than later. I’m pregnant.”

Joe nearly dropped his cup in surprise at her matter-of-fact delivery. John, for his part, went unnaturally still, as if frozen in place. As Joe rightened his cup and took a mouthful of its contents more by instinct than intent, though, John managed, “What? Er – ah – how….”

Julian looked their fastidious, fussy, and very scientifically literate brother dead in the eye. "I had sex, John,” she said.

And that was how Joe ended up accidentally creating inappropriate intimacy between Earl Grey and his sinuses.

“Sorry – sorry,” he coughed. He cleared his throat and looked up at John. “Just - are you sure about the quality control on the biology part of that Frankenstein’s major of yours, John?”

“Even surer than I am that you shouldn’t pursue a life as a comedian,” said John, scowling and, seemingly, blushing. Knowing him, of course, it was more because it was against Mom’s Rules to talk about biological things – such as how mammals reproduced – at the table than it was because he had just sounded really stupid.

Julian laughed, and somehow, Joe suspected it was at both of them. “Oh, don’t look like that John – it really was a stupid question! Though I know what you meant,” she added in a placating tone, reaching out to put her hand over John’s for a moment. “I was surprised, too – though neither of us really should be. There are still the other two-thirds of everything in working order..."

“Clearly,” muttered John.

“Do the others know?” asked Joe.

Julian nodded. “I saw Mom the same day I found out, so everyone knows,” she said. “You two were away, though, so here we are.” Her eyelids lowered slightly, sending her dark lashes into sharp relief against her cheeks, as she fiddled with her teacup. “For now, anyway,” she said. “William’s received an important promotion. So important that it’s going to take us to Ottawa.”

“Ottawa,” Joe repeated.

“Ottawa,” Julian confirmed. “No more languishing in the countryside for him! As for me…” She sighed. “After what happened last time, I told him that I barely plan to leave this house until after this baby is born. Pulling up sticks and going to Ottawa right now is out of the question.”

“Bet he didn’t like hearing that,” said John. Julian looked annoyed.

“He was very understanding, thank you very much,” she said coolly. “But he can’t put his career on hold for me.”

“The hell he can’t,” objected Joe.

Julian gave him a shallow smile. “I don’t even want him to,” she said. “What’s good for one of us is good for both of us. Besides, he’ll visit all the time – and Lenore is going to stay with me, though I’m pretty sure she’ll spend more time in the library than she does with me…”

John flinched, slopping tea into his saucer. Julian and Joe both looked at him, surprised by this unusual behavior, and Joe decided – more by gut feeling than any conscious thought process – to interject.

“Doesn’t she basically live in there anyway?” he asked.

“Enough that she’s had her own room here since before my biological father died,” said Julian. “For times when she wants to get straight back to work in the morning, apparently. I think Bertram was confused when he realized I was confused about this place basically coming with its own Owl-Eyes.”

“That’s not very nice,” said John, absently, occupied with trying to tip the majority of the tea in his saucer back into the cup, heedless of how this was allowing what had seeped under the cup to drip drops onto his jeans. “She hardly ever wears them.”

Joe looked at John again. Julian also repeated the behavior. “I was making an allusion, John,” said Julian, finally. “Gatsby.”

“Ah,” said John. “Oh, yes. I remember that one now. Well – all your books seem to be real, and I think I’ve looked at most of them by now.”

“Yes – and give over with that, you’re making a mess,” said Julian. “We have plenty of tea. Just Vanish that and fill another cup. And then put it down and listen to me for a minute."

And now they were getting to the point, Joe thought. He sipped his tea despite the remains of the burning sensation inside his head and waited while John followed directions.

Julian took another sip of her tea, too, as though to brace herself before she said, "You know, you're not really that far from Ottawa - at the moment, anyway. But it really is high time you thought about the future, John. Do you and Sammy ever intend on - well - actually getting married?"

Joe raised his eyebrows, as that was not what he had expected at all. John looked mystified as he shook his head. "I'm one of nature's bachelors," he said. "And she has terrible taste in men, if Park is anything to go by - she goes out with Clark, sometimes, but I don't think she's going to marry him either. Pity, really."

"Pity?"

"Clark has a nice house now. It would be very convenient if they got married and she was over there. I could move back upstairs in my house without things really having to change very much."

Joe and Julian both half-nodded at once - as emphatic as John could get about how the world ought to be changed, he was rarely enthusiastic to see his immediate surroundings altered in any way.

"Yes, well," said Julian. "Life isn't very convenient." She made a slight face, as though facing a distasteful task. "I was hoping I could avoid just asking you, but you're thick as a brick - your whole system - is it really a running joke, or are you actually gay, or all three of you together, or...whatever?"

John, curiously, did not look outraged by the accusations, or even particularly surprised - just annoyed. "Why is it that you people who have it always assume everyone else is also obsessed with sex?" he asked.

"I am not obsessed with sex," said Julian. "Why do you always assume that anyone who likes anything at all must be obsessed with it? We're not all like you, you know. Most of us can like something without turning it into a lifestyle." She shook her head and raised a hand to cut John off before he could start arguing. "I don't care if you've hooked up with every man, woman, parakeet, and other in New York," she said. "I just don't want it to be a surprise to William if he goes East and someone decided to mention 'oh, I heard your brother-in-law is into weird stuff.' Surely you can understand that."

John grimaced. "Unfortunately," he admitted, sounding cranky still - crankier, even. "But there's nothing for anyone to surprise him with. I'm one of nature's bachelors, and I have too much work to do to even think about it."

Julian nodded. "Thank you," she said, and then turned to Joe. "And Joe - "

"No parakeets here, either," he said. "Or men or Other, for that matter," he added, and even John laughed.

"So noted," said Julian. "Thank you - but that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk with you about what you'll be doing this summer."

"Why do I have a feeling you want to make a suggestion?" said Joe.

"Because I want to make a suggestion," said Julian with a smile. "I have the paperwork all here for you to fill out, actually, for an internship at the Ministry in Ottawa."

"Nepotism much?" said John.

"Are you saying Joe isn't good enough?" asked Julian. "For shame John." John made an exasperated noise in his throat. "And anyway, it won't be directly with William - just in the same building. And you can both stay with the Archers, at their house there, and they're wonderful hosts."

"Archer," said Joe. "I've heard that name."

"Of course. William's known them all his life, and...and Teddy had the bad luck to be the person I was talking to at that party where I...fell over." Julian pressed her lips together so thinly that it was hard to see the light pink color of her current lipstick; John, looking perturbed, topped up her teacup and put it back into her hands - presumably trying to make her feel better. Joe doubted it would work, but it did at least distract her, as she looked at the cup as though unsure what it was for a moment before picking the thread of what she had been saying back up again. "Well. He and his sister are lovely people, I'm sure you'll all get along perfectly, and Peggy can play hostess until I can come along, for anything William needs one for. And it will be wonderful for you, Joe, to make connections, and for your resume. So you'll do it?"

Joe stared at his sister in mild exasperation. She was right, of course. What she was proposing would be a good solid step toward the kind of career he wanted. It would also, however, come with a lot of strings attached, and besides - did Julian think he couldn't manage his own affairs? She had always tried to manage John like this, it was true - Joe was under the impression that one reason John and their niece Cecily got along so well was because they shared an almost identical relationship to Julian, with her wanting to manage them and neither of them wanting to be managed - but Julian tended to treat Joe as though he could, in fact, tie his shoes while chewing gum....

"I don't suppose I have much choice, do I?" he said.

"No," said Julian, the picture of serenity. "Not really."

16 Joe Umland Three Alumni Have A Tea Party 329 Joe Umland 1 5

Julian Welles

April 09, 2020 2:45 PM

Then two of them really talk. by Julian Welles

It was never easy, lying to the people who knew you best. Julian did not like it one bit, and tried to avoid it as far as possible. Sometimes, though, it was simply impossible to do much else, and so she did her best.

John had wandered off to check something in the library (hopefully, she thought, smiling slightly at a memory, he could avoid getting into any duels up there, as she was reasonably sure Lenore had gone home for a few days) , leaving Julian with Joe, who was going to finish his tea and scone and then go see Mom and Dad for a bit before heading out again. At the moment, however, he showed no signs of being in any hurry to leave, and she bit her lip, concerned about whether he was upset with her for sticking her nose into his affairs....

"You don't mind too much, do you?" she asked. "About all that?" she nodded to the large, flat envelope of forms perched on the arm of his chair.

In the back of her mind, she wondered how it was she had started relying so on Joe, of all people. He was, after all, the baby of the family, the last person in the world it should have occurred to her to use for help, instead of merely helping him along as best she could. She supposed becoming criminals together was a bond that transcended a lot of social customs, but they had both been perfectly respectable members of society, as far as she knew, for years, now, after that one...aberration. The further times they had both seen Joanie and known she knew didn't count; Julian had made this work for herself by making a point of never doing magic in front of Joanie or mentioning anything the younger woman wasn't supposed to know. Therefore, she was not actively breaking the law, and could just pretend that horrible night at the house had never happened, as she much preferred to do anyway.

16 Julian Welles Then two of them really talk. 254 0 5

Joe Umland

April 09, 2020 3:07 PM

Spilling all the tea. by Joe Umland

It was interesting, watching how Julian was in front of one audience instead of another. Everybody lied, of course, and pretended to be things they were not - for half-blood (for all intents and purposes, anyway) children like themselves, it was habitual from the cradle - but the interesting thing about Julian was that she didn't seem to notice she was doing it. She just was one thing and then another. Ten minutes earlier, Joe would have sworn she didn't notice that he was not entirely happy with her just arranging his life, but now she very clearly did.

"It's a good opportunity," he said. "Just like you said. I just wish you would tell me why you're really doing it."

Thinking over it, after all, as they had all argued amicably over whether there was a chance under Heaven that John could possibly ever pass himself off as a woman even under Polyjuice and then whether John's arguments for why Joe was indeed the more effeminate of the two of them were sexist (it had been a singularly odd conversation, of the sort which was only really possible, he thought, in their family), he had realized that Julian could not possibly just be looking after his future. She had framed her questions about John's sexuality as concern about his future, after all, before conceding that their brother was 'thick as a brick' in some areas and just asking what she wanted to ask. Then she had repeated the same lines to Joe, and he had briefly been distracted, but then he had thought about it while engaged in the silly fun-arguing that didn't take much of his brainpower to do.

It was hard, he thought, to remember that neither John nor Julian were as thick as they seemed to like to appear sometimes. He knew perfectly well about the bizarre sequence of events which had led to John's current living arrangements - Sammy had only adopted John, for lack of a better term, because he and Joe had been off speaking terms that year - and he knew that Julian put a lot of effort into writing apparently fluff fluff pieces for the Society Bee under pseudonyms solely to increase William's public visibility - but remembering things like that took an active effort on his part. Otherwise, he was very bad, he knew, to look at John's manic obliviousness and odd obsessions, and at Julian's rambling, abysmally spelled letters and then to translate all that into a fallacy about how since he hadn't changed at all since they were kids, they must not have either....

"I mean, I'm grateful, but you don't do this," he said. "You've never tried to pull strings for me or John anywhere before, because you know we'd find that annoying. So why are you suddenly so convinced I need you to point me toward good internships?"

16 Joe Umland Spilling all the tea. 329 0 5

Julian Umland

April 09, 2020 3:23 PM

I don't think we need to go that far. We are civilized people, after all. by Julian Umland

Julian grimaced when Joe pointed out everything she'd sort of hoped he would overlook. She hadn't expected it, of course, because Joe had always been one to point out when someone was spinning b.s. around him, even when they were little, but....

"Well, you are aiming for what's my world now," she pointed out. "And everything here is about who you know. It's why John has got to go into some kind of private service, he'd never survive even in research divisions in the Ministry...But you're right. I wouldn't normally just...do that, but I couldn't exactly tell John why I need you to go to Ottawa, could I? He'd go ballistic if I told him that I think - " she struggled for a moment, not wanting to actually say it out loud, not even to Joe, who she had entrusted with the task of looking after her assets and her daughter if circumstances ever made it impossible for her to look after them herself. "That I think my husband needs - an eye kept on him."

Her face twisted of its own accord, as though the words had a physically unpleasant taste. She hoped that it didn't ruin her opinion of Earl Grey, which was the only thing she actually did really taste at the moment; the Earl had been her friend and comforter for far too long for her to relinquish him over paranoia.

"I mean - I don't think - it's not like that," she protested, half-honestly, before he could react to that. "One time - when I first went back after I stayed at home for a while last year - it didn't look good, but I have no reason not to believe him about what was really going on," she said stubbornly. "But if it had happened in Ottawa, and anyone but me had seen it, it might have been a scandal - especially since I have cousins in Newfoundland who thought they were going to get this place and were not very happy to find out I exist. The ones that sued me, remember? So I just - want someone who can make it less likely there are any...misunderstandings." She shrugged. "And you can keep an eye on John, too. If neither of them is going to marry him, then it's only a matter of time before all John's people wander off, and he'll turn into one of the Desert Fathers if someone doesn't remind him not to."

16 Julian Umland I don't think we need to go that far. We are civilized people, after all. 254 Julian Umland 0 5

Joe Umland

April 09, 2020 3:46 PM

That's fair I suppose. by Joe Umland

Joe stared at his sister when she explained why she had been unable to say what she wanted in front of John. He continued to stare at her as she then began blustering in defense of William. He thought he ought to interrupt her, somehow, but as she went on, he couldn't think of anything to say, and so just went on staring blankly.

"You cannot be serious," he managed finally. "You want me to babysit your husband for you because you think he's going to screw around if you don't have eyes on him at all times?"

He ignored the bit about not allowing John to become a hermit, as it was extraneous and also a thing he had already taken for granted someone would have to do sooner or later, and probably sooner. John and his circle were, after all, steadily advancing into their mid-twenties, the phase where most people started to be a little more sensible; Joe's understanding was that Clark had a proper boring adult job already, from John's occasional grumbling about how his friend was wasting his talents 'bowing and scraping to lice on the back of society' - in other words, people rich enough to need landscape enchantments - 'when they haven't got the brains to polish shoes properly.' It was only a matter of time, too, before Sammy tired of living in the woods and hearing about birds at length. And of course at some point, there would be no more grants money or scholarships or whatever - or John would simply reach a terminal degree in his field, whatever it was supposed to be - and then he, too, would most likely end up bowing and scraping to lice for sixty or seventy years in one form or another, if he didn't end up in either prison, Heaven, or the madhouse for trying to change that in some way....

There would be plenty of headaches to deal with from that, no doubt. But at least they didn't involve anyone doing anything that made Joe rather want to resort to violence for the second time in his life.

"I'm not sure I can promise you there won't be a scandal if he does," he added grimly, "because in that case, I'd probably kill him."

"No you would not," said Julian sharply. "And you're also not going to tell Dad or any of our brothers about any of this," she added, clearly expecting him to see the obvious loophole there, which involved allowing Dad, Steve, Paul, and John to make a boys' day out of the job instead. "Or Joanie, or anyone else you think would tell one of them about it," she added, covering even more bases. "Now, hexing his face inside-out if that happened, that you can do, if necessary, but hopefully nothing like that will happen at all, and you'll just have a nice summer learning how things get done in the world."

She had reverted to the same bustly, busy, mumsy tone she had used most of the time she had been speaking to him and John together, he realized. He didn't think she even believed it herself.

"Hopefully," he said. "Though thanks for the face-inverting concession, I guess."

Julian smiled brilliantly - both, he guessed, grateful and relieved that he wasn't pushing the issue any further. "You're welcome," she said.

16 Joe Umland That's fair I suppose. 329 0 5