'Oh yes...Derivative Dogma has been in our revivalism for some time now... eight months, I'd say. A very noteworthy business, if I must be so honest. Is it best to hope for the best, my good fellow? But... it is very so keen to move a movement, you know!' Pastor McKinley, with his Gnostic gait, and smile of that of a reachable furlong, very openly wide and stretchable, stamped his thick oaken cigar to its demise on the stove, and carried his weight onto the daybed his house-guests amiably sat, entertained, for sure, but not doing so well on their own, he imagined.
'Tell me of Clarissa,' said he, the pastor, stinking up the place with his strongish Latin tobacco tucked peculiarly in his throat; the cigar itself still bobbed its weary billowy cascades from the kitchen before them--but still, there was something else... he was different, and somehow, was the very man they had known for years.
'Is she doing quite alright with the dismissal of her mother? I know I wouldn't be.'
'No,' said a most tentative Fredrick, unknowing of just the perfect sentence to string-along: he did just fine with the words he found on a moment's gaze: 'Clarissa's alright... really; it's not whom I'm worried over.'
'Oh?' This caught the pastor's diabolical attention; his head was rushing, and he didn't look so bored as he had when the two arrived early in the noontime.
'Clarissa's dear, dear friend... um, a Sigourney Laurens died earlier in the week. A poisoning, or so I'm told. She hasn't been right ever since.'
'Yes, a death is a very unfortunate matter. However, can't you see that Martha may just be another problem for the growing child? After all, she needs an appropriate mother-figure, and sad to say, fathers do not supply all the truest, most respected answers. She needs... feminine beauty, someone who can teach without being taught. That's a mother's profession, is not, Martha?'
Martha hadn't said a word since she had arrived with Fredrick, and this may have been out of some dialogued disablement previously gone-over thoroughly at their Laraine Ave. home in the morning of August the 2nd, 1936--she wasn't the keenest of women when it came to passing the harangue and ill-speak with forgetfulness and mixed leisure. No, she was a woman who hadn't a voice of her own, but more than anything she tried being human, only to be told of how "avoidable" she was and had been-- so she tried newer things: as marked appropriate by diddled-midnight-- throwing her shuffle-slippers at Fredrick, making appointments to see a psychiatric doctor by the name of Hermann Thates, drugging the cat on some lecherous readily-available chemical that would stand its trial on the next-coming year: nothing worked, her head was always ringing remarkably obnoxious, and with the cat dead and gone, they got another--it was named by the end of the week, badly enough, Pete Doright, and she knew it wouldn't be too long until the cat made an annoyance out of felines everywhere. She was here to create a good living environment--but her mental passions got the better of her capacity to perceive anything as moral or kindred. She need a differed air, this was for sure.
'Martha...? I am ever so intrigued to hear your side of this... thing,'
said the pastor, in a wild, transfixed nicotine-habitual struggle: his eyes flitted and made the ominous space above them their home... the dithering smoke from the stove-top... he couldn't take his whiplash sight off it.
'Martha! The good pastor asked you a question; answer the man, will you, my Martha?'
And she took a rather unbiased breath, let this pass all throughout her and her body, and looked into both gentleman's stupefied looks:
'No,' she said.
'No? What do you mean nn--I'm so, so sor... Martha's never been this way. Rather odd. I don't see why.'
'Well...? How have I damned been then, my husband?' she blat.
'How peculiar...' said the pastor, 'how very peculiar indeed. Well, it looks to me like the pretending of loving one another was never part of the agreement, so I see: and why shall it ever? You two've, oh, how do I say?--grown tired of the other: and that's not uncommon for the average marital structure these days, or so I hear.'
'You shut your fucking toad-mouth, you foolish old coward!'
Both gentleman looked onward from her treacherous behavior, and settled their viewings on the banana-designed walls, which were being peeled down from the ceiling.
'Christ, is that ugly!'
'Is it ever? My stodgy fingernails truthfully didn't do the trick--bananas of all things!' they were ignoring the wife-figure, whom was once a very big part of the conversation.
'Maybe you can settle for pig's skin, eh? Couldn't hurt, I think!'
'Pigs are the ugliest creature of God's kingdom,' said McKinley, 'however you strike true to what I wish to achieve: anything would be better than yellow fruits... I may be light-skinned, but I'm no deviation of how it was meant to be. Man+Man=chimps. Man+Woman=turtledoves.
Martha, I know you think we're just wandering souls spewing our big-talk for everyone to read, but I assure you, we're not. And you should be thrilled you're a woman: you can produce for God's chosen... whereas with the man, they cannot; they strike a nerve deep within me that makes me so upset I have to drink in order to be pure again.'
'You've never been pure, you old fool, never EVER...'
They were growing weary of this woman, but she hadn't the mind to care.
'Martha, my dear, those really are quite hurtful things you just said--I would very much like it if you retracted them. Would you... for me?' said the pastor, his face getting more and more dimensionally anxious.
'Fucking pastors! Fucking husbands! You all are all alike!'
'Come now, my dear:' said a now frantic Fredrick, 'you shouldn't say such things, ... you'll bring an apocalypse down upon us for doing as we please! We're lower than that, can't you see?'
'No, she said, dreadfully , 'I cannot.'
And so, this ended their brief morning-encounter with the pastor in his lovely Cockney-approved house on hills and rugged terrain alike. It was mostly on due accounts for an advisable reckoning, but Fredrick, more-so than his Martha, saw to it that McKinley would help matters gloatingly fast and precise: but they still had a bereaved daughter, and a mother who'd soon enough be separated from the smallish family by the Manchester hearings.
Clarissa Arthur-Semway was born the 7th of March, 1919: she was a lively 16, and let everyone surrounding know it: 'Sorry, my good friend--but I haven't been given the right to kiss boys much older than myself,'
'But it's for fun and none other!' had said Sigourney Laurels of attending a rather-late sailor's party by the 3rd of July.
'I shan't kiss whom I haven't--'
'For quandary's sake, girl! All it is is moving your moth onto theirs... that is all it is about,'
'Hm. I don't know.'
'What's there to know about? Have some fun while you're alive!'
And so, they went, both, in stunning purplish and bluish dresses of French modernization.
'We shouldn't look like we've lived in a cave up until now, shall we? Who wants to have a go at, I tell you? Nobody I can think.'
'Yes,' said Clarissa rather shrilly, 'but what if they're carrying some terrible disease, in their semen--or in their blood, maybe... you never know. We could end up hospitalized because of it, I hope you know.'
'Sod that!' said Sigourney, eager and mannishly. 'Sod that all! We're growing women... and we need some excitement in our lives, don't you think?'
And fixing her Cloche a little to see properly-- lifting her eyes credulously from her semantic skim-milk curls, looking like the skin of a doe under the heavies of the cloche. She saw her friend's widening grin; her palm-slapping of meantime approval.
'I shall see to it, then,' said Clarissa, 'that this party will be well-attended by all... us included.'
'Hurrah!' pleasantly shouted Sigourney-- 'we better be off now; no late attendants, 'member? Lee Boy'll happy to see us, won't he!'
