The Rainbow (Frerard) [underwater_sky]

September - Last Words (Part One)

           The show was on a Friday night, just before Labor Day. Everything felt so rushed. Callie and Dean literally stayed up the night before helping Vivian to organize it. Vivian also pulled a night shift for the show, Cassandra and Noelle staying up until the wee hours of the morning and acting as coffee and pizza people before they both crashed on the couch Vivian had in her office on campus. Vivian had wanted a vacation from school before she started up again, but with this undertaking she ended up spending even more time there than she thought was possible. When she wasn't there overseeing Callie and Dean's efforts and the transportation down to the art center, she was with the professor in his office. Walter, his name was Walter, I reminded myself, and though he was still suffering from bursts of dead white man's disease he was getting out of it slowly. He had been helping Vivian with Noelle and Cassandra's duties after they had passed out from exhaustion, and brought everyone involved breakfast as soon as they were done. He came bearing gifts of eggs, cheese, and meat, but since those who were helping us out had the least amount of diet restrictions, his gifts were welcomed with open arms. Vivian, between praises of thanks, did try to warn him that it wouldn't be so easy to please us.

            "Not that you all are picky, or anything. I totally get your decisions and respect them. But this'll be a good test for him. I need to know how he copes under pressure," she quipped, and in spite of all the teasing she did about her boyfriend when he wasn't around, I could tell she was falling for him fast. The laughs that I had begun to associate with her in Gerard's presence became transferred to her relaying a story about Walter. Similarly, the flash in her eyes and playful gestures were now all reserved for this new economics professor, who we were going to be meeting very soon. He was going to go to our show tonight, and if that wasn't going to be a large eye-opening experience for him, I didn't know what would. It would make or break the relationship, Vivian knew, but she was determined to have him come. She was no longer teasing about vegan and vegetarian diet quirks. This wasn't just her livelihood she was letting him come into; this was viewing her family in what they did best. Out of all the art shows she had organized during her career which began way too long ago to remember ("and don't make me, Frank"), this was going to be her favorite one. There would have been no way she would have given up the last days of her vacation in order to get it all together if this didn't mean the world to her. If Walter didn't like it, she knew she would no longer be around Walter in the same context.

            "May as well know right away whether or not it will last. It's only been a month, but we're both old and running out of time," she quipped, trying not to betray herself and give away how much this did matter. Vivian was forty-eight this year in November, and Walter was actually only forty-six. She liked being the older person in the relationship, for once, though I assured her that she really wasn't that old at all. Walter had no children and had never been married before. Family life was something he never experienced yet, but was definitely warming up to the idea and getting used to the amount that Vivian seemed to have buzzing around her. He had already met Cassandra on several occasions, and knew that Noelle wasn't just her really close best friend. Although Vivian had told him her daughter was dating a girl, Cassandra wanted to make that point extra clear and put her arm around Noelle at the dinner table, and then up her skirt at one point. Vivian recounted the story to me with her face in her palm and shaking her head, saying that this was worse than any teenage boy. Walter had been fine with this display; he tried to bring up discussion about the local politics and gay marriage. However, he did figure that this was as weird as it got. It was a real test when Vivian had been talking about Jasmine when they first met one another, and then suddenly switched to Hunter and began to talk about when he was due to give birth, probably after the show. This had caused Walter to pause considerably, and while Vivian's explanation wasn't as in depth as Hunter would have given, she managed to convey the situation. It took him a few days to let that information sink in, but he was learning the importance of asking questions and not assuming anything. He was very used to dealing with numbers and while some of the financial theory he taught became highly conceptual, it was still dealing with something that had a fairly material basis.