When we went out clothes-shopping, she didn’t fuss about trying on bras or skirts, or insist on buying only jeans, like some people. And you saw how she was dressed, just now — she picked that out herself. But we didn’t have time to buy very much because she got so anxious about the housework she’d left undone.

Wanderer and Homebody

Part 2 of 6

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. It's a sequel of sorts to my earlier novel Twisted Throwback, but it should stand alone tolerably well (though it features three characters from Twisted Throwback). Thanks to Morpheus for his feedback on the rough draft.

You can read the opening chapter of my novel The Bailiff and the Mermaid for free, or buy it at Smashwords or Amazon.

Mindy came in when we were nearly done and said “Tim, it’s time for bed.”

“We’re almost done,” she pleaded.

“Five more minutes,” Mindy amended. “You’re doing a great job, but it doesn’t all have to be done tonight. I picked the living room because you can leave it a mess overnight and it won’t matter.”

(It looked to me like they did most of their living in the den, and kept the living room looking pretty for visitors. There wasn’t a big console in here, only a couple of small picture-frames rotating photos mostly of Mindy and Steve’s families, with a few of them and their children together.)

So we left several stacks of papers and things spread out on the sofa, while we put other things back in the cabinet in neatly organized trays. I hugged Tim goodnight.

“What time does it suit for me to come over tomorrow?” I asked.

“Eight, maybe eight-thirty? Just before Steve and I leave for work.”

“See y’all then.”

Emily followed me out onto the porch. “She’s really glad to have you here,” she said.

“I’m glad I’m finally here,” I said. “I wish I hadn’t been so far away when he Twisted, but... well, staying in North America for five or six years, during the whole window of time when he might have Twisted, just seemed too claustrophobic.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” she said. “You’ve been coming to see him regularly, and I expect you’ve had to fight your compulsions sometimes to be here when you told them you would, right?”

I nodded curtly. “What do you think? About how she’s doing, I mean?”

She looked thoughtful. “I don’t think she’s just putting a brave face on; she’s really okay with her new gender. When we went out clothes-shopping, she didn’t fuss about trying on bras or skirts, or insist on buying only jeans, like some people. And you saw how she was dressed, just now — she picked that out herself. But we didn’t have time to buy very much because she got so anxious about the housework she’d left undone.”

“What do you think the compulsion is really focused on? Did she try to straighten things out at the store, if there was anything out of order — jeans on the skirt rack or something? Or the magazines in the doctor’s waiting room?”

“No — she just kept talking about stuff back home that she wasn’t satisfied with and wanted to be cleaner or neater. We’d washed and put away all the dishes and clothes before we left the house, and Aunt Mindy tells me the place hasn’t been this clean since Steve hired a cleaning service to get it ready for her to see, back when they were dating. But it’s still not enough for her.”

“So it’s not a general cleaning compulsion — that’s good, I guess.” I sighed. “I hope we can help her. Or the doctors can.”

“You think they’ll put her on anti-compulsion drugs, like Ryan?”

Ryan was my older cousin; he got some nasty compulsions from his Twist, which had been imperfectly controlled by drugs until suddenly they weren’t controlled anymore, and eventually he decided drastic amateur surgery was the only way to suppress them permanently. “I don’t know. I think they’ve improved the drugs since Ryan’s Twist, so there’s fewer side effects. But I don’t think they’ll use them without trying less drastic methods first.”

“Like meditation?”

“Or hypnosis, or more basic techniques. Sometimes you can sort of trick yourself into satisfying your compulsions in one way when your natural impulse would be to satisfy them in another way... for instance, when I go walk or drive around for a few hours and then come back to the same place, instead of just drifting on like part of me wants to do. Or how you play off your socializing compulsion against your studying compulsion to keep them both under control.”

She laughed nervously. “Speaking of which, I need to get some studying in before bed. And I should call Vic now,” she pulled out her phone and speed-dialed, “or I’ll study until I fall asleep and forget to call him... Good night, Uncle Jack.”

“See you tomorrow. Say hi to Vic for me.”

I was worried about Tim, but I was also pretty exhausted from three days of travel, so it didn’t take me long to fall asleep once I got checked in to my hotel. One aspect of my Twist helps me adjust to new time zones quickly, but “quickly” is relative; where other people my age might take a week to adjust to traveling across nine time zones (including the International Dateline), I can usually get over it in a day or so.

In other words, though I fell asleep quickly I didn’t sleep for very long. It was late afternoon in the New Guinea highlands, and very early morning in Austin, when I woke up again and could not get back to sleep. I got up and worked on a translation job for a couple of hours, and then went for a walk around the neighborhood — I pick my hotels for how safe they are to walk around near at night — before returning to get a short nap again just before dawn, hoping that would help me adjust to local time. (I’d called my clients and told them I had to cancel the most urgent jobs, due to a family emergency, but I still had some lower-priority translations to work on when I had time. This one was the latest season of a popular Nigerian vid serial, which I was subtitling in Tagalog.)

I woke up from my nap feeling a little more localized, showered, and ate breakfast at a local diner I’d discovered on one of my earlier visits; then headed over to Mindy and Steve’s house just before eight-thirty. Steve was just about to walk out the door when I arrived.

“Good morning, Jack,” he said, opening the door for me. “Tim’s in the kitchen... See you tonight, I guess. I’m off.” He stepped past me and headed toward his car; I passed through the living room into the kitchen, where Tim and Emily were working on the breakfast dishes.

“Good morning, Uncle Jack,” Emily said, dried off her hands, and came over to hug me. Tim smiled at me, but it seemed to cost her some effort to stop working on the dishes for a few moments so she could get the next hug.

“Good morning, sweetie,” I said. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?” I.e., Were you able to sleep or were you constantly thinking about housework that needed to be done?

“Yeah, I think I got enough sleep,” Tim said, looking evasive. Emily added:

“She got a lot of things accomplished, even if sleep wasn’t one of the things.”

“Hmm?”

“I was only up for a couple of hours,” Tim protested. “Maybe three.”

“I couldn’t sleep through the night either; jet lag, you know. Hopefully tonight will be better.”

Just then Mindy came through the kitchen, dressed for work. “Oh, good, you’re here. Paulina’s supposed to be dropping Lisa off any time now, on her way to work. Sorry I’ve got to rush.”

“Do what you need to do. Anything I need to know?”

She huffed. “Try to keep Tim out of Lisa and Craig’s rooms, okay?” She gave Tim a stern glance; Tim looked sheepish.

When Mindy had rushed out, I asked: “So, who’s Paulina, where’s Craig, and why does your mom think I need to worry about keeping you out of your stepsiblings' rooms?”

“Paulina is Lisa’s friend Joelle’s mom — Lisa spent the night at her house. Craig’s still asleep. And... um... I kind of got in trouble for cleaning Lisa’s room in the middle of the night.”

“Ah... Well, since I was up and going for a walk at three a.m., I can’t throw stones.”

She giggled.

“So... what are our projects for today? I think you said something about washing windows?”

“Yes, and I want to organize some more cabinets and closets...”

A few minutes later, after she’d shown me where the cleaning supplies were, and the stepladder, I was on the east side of the house, mounting the stepladder to wash the outside of one of the living room windows. Tim looked out at me and smiled; she’d already begun washing the inside of it.

“Good work,” I said. I’d dialed her phone and we’d put on headsets before we started, so we could talk as well as see each other through the windows.

“Thanks, Daddy. We can do the living room and den windows, and Steve said it’s okay to do the one in his office but I’m supposed to wait and work with him on cleaning the other stuff in there... I hope I can wait, I don’t want to get in trouble again...”

“Just focus on other stuff that needs doing. Isn’t there something else that needs doing just as badly?”

“Oh, yeah, lots of stuff. Lisa’s room still needs work even after I worked at it until I was sleepy enough to go back to bed, and Craig’s room needs vacuuming and dusting even though he’s not as messy as Lisa, but I’m supposed to ask their permission to clean in there. And the den still needs a lot of work, I dusted and vacuumed but I want to vacuum under the furniture too; can you help move it out of the way?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

We’d moved on to the den window when a car pulled up in the driveway. “Someone’s here,” I said, gesturing toward it. “Do you want me to go say hello to them?”

“It’s probably Paulina with Lisa. I’ll go answer the door.” But she gave the window another good scrub before she put down her washrag and squeegee bottle and left the window.

I waved to the people getting out of the car. Yes, that was Lisa, though she was noticeably taller than when I’d seen her at Christmas, and she’d dyed and cut her hair since then. I didn’t think the black spiky look suited her, but I wasn’t about to say anything.

“Hi, Tim’s dad,” she said, avoiding the front door and coming around to where I was still standing on the ladder. “Tim’s put you to work, too?”

“Is that what she’s doing?” I said in mock dismay. “And she charged me a whole quarter for letting me wash windows! I know I should have taken up that other fellow’s offer to whitewash the fence, he only wanted ten cents.”

Lisa rolled her eyes; the older woman laughed. “You must be, ah, Tim’s father? I’m Paulina Yancey; my daughter Joelle goes to school with Tim and Lisa. Is Mindy home?”

“She’s at work, or on her way. Shall I give her a message?”

“No. Just... I need to get to work. I suppose I may see you again. Have you got everything out of the car, Lisa?”

Lisa silently hefted her duffel bag and nodded. Paulina waved and went back to her car, just as Tim went out the front door — I couldn’t see her from that angle, but I heard over my headset when she said: “Good morning, Mrs. Yancey. Where’s Lisa?”

“Around the side of the house talking to your father. Sorry, I’ve got to run,” and she got in her car and went.

“So what do you think of your new daughter?” Lisa asked.

I paused and thought, knowing that Tim would hear me over her headset. “Tim is a very thoughtful young woman,” I said. “She set aside two slices of cake for you last night — they should still be there even if your dad and brother devoured the rest of it.”

Tim came back to the window then, and opened it a crack so Lisa could hear her. “Hi, Lisa. Did you have fun at Joelle’s house?”

“Yeah. I’ll try to talk her into inviting you next time, if you want.”

Tim had already resumed scrubbing the window, and I went back to work on my side as well. “Thanks. I would have been too busy to come this time, but maybe later... it would be nice. Do you think Joelle’s okay with Twisted?”

“She thinks Twisted are weird, because no offense, you kinda are. But she’ll invite you over if I tell her to.”

“Okay...”

“Well, I’mo go put my stuff away. And don’t think I’m going to spend my spring break washing and sorting stuff even if you managed to talk your cousin and your dad into helping.” She grinned and went around to the back door.

Tim and I finished up the den window and moved on to the window in Steve’s office. I’d just gotten the stepladder in place and started spraying on cleaner fluid when I heard Lisa’s yell, filtered through Tim’s phone and the glass of the window:

“TIM! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY ROOM?”

“Oops,” Tim said.

“I’ll come on in and help with damage control,” I said, and dismounted the ladder.

By the time I got inside and to the office, Lisa had gotten a lot more shouting in and had apparently grabbed Tim by the arms and shaken her before Emily intervened. (She’d been organizing the dishes and cups in the kitchen cabinets according to Tim’s instructions, and had come running when she heard the altercation.)

“— messed with my stuff, you have no right! I never barged into your room and rummaged through your bugs and your underwear and stuff!”

“Lisa,” I said, “has anybody explained to you about Twist compulsions?”

She took a deep breath and glared at me. “We had a unit about Twisted in health sciences. And I looked it up online, when Dad started dating Mindy and I found out Tim might be Twisted.”

Tim said quietly, “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry, but it was just so messy I couldn’t leave it alone... I hardly threw anything away, and I didn’t really read anything...”

“She couldn’t help it,” Emily pleaded. “We’re trying to help her get better control over it, but it’s going to take time.”

“Tim seems to have a compulsion to keep things clean and organized,” I said. “We’re still figuring out how it works. But... Tim doesn’t have to clean everything herself, as long as it gets done. Right, Tim?”

“Right.”

“So if you clean your own room...” I suggested.

“...Then I won’t have to,” Tim finished.

“You’re not my mom,” Lisa said mulishly. “Keep out of my stuff.” She stomped off to her room and slammed the door.

“That could have gone better,” Emily said with a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said miserably.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” I said, and hugged her. “Just keep trying to do better.”

Tim let me hug her for a few more moments, sniffling a little, and then said: “Can we wash some more windows?”

I smiled wanly. “Sure, sweetie.”

But on my way to the front door, I met Craig, who’d woken up after all that commotion, and had come into the kitchen to get something to eat.

“Oh, hey, Jack. What was that hollering about?”

“Lisa’s mad at Tim,” Emily put in, having followed me into the kitchen. “I think she’ll get over it.”

“Hmm.” Craig didn’t sound surprised or upset; maybe he was used to his younger siblings yelling at each other for “little-kid” reasons that seem utterly trivial from the lofty height of seventeen years. “You going to be around all day?”

“I expect so, unless we can coax Tim into going out to lunch with us.”

“I’mo go hang with some friends after I eat and wash up. Dad already knows, he’s cool with it.”

“I’m not here to babysit you, Craig. But — just a word of warning?”

“Hmm?” He was suddenly defensive.

“If there’s something in your room you don’t want Tim to see, if for instance she suddenly got a compulsion to clean up in there... you might want to take it with you. I’ll try to keep Tim out of there, but I can’t promise anything. And if you straighten up a little before you go, maybe vacuum the floor, it might help Tim keep the impulse under control.”

His eyes widened. “Okay.”

“And... is it okay if we wash the window in your room? I’ll make sure Tim doesn’t mess with anything else.”

I've started working on a fourth Valentine Divergence story; it's probably going to be a novella or short novel, as it's already over 11,000 words. I'm also making slow steady progress on the third book in the sequence that began with Wine Can't be Pressed Into Grapes.

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors more than other retailers.)