Teaching and Blasphemy

She carried a sign, started chants, and diffused a shitty counter protester.

“The chocolatiest chocolate cake you have on hand,” Cordelia said. “Please.”

She chewed on Gwen’s words as Gwen ducked behind the counter to get her what she’d asked for. You can’t tell Calliope and not him. Why not? Calliope at eight years old knew better how to be discreet than Rudyard Funn ever did. Calliope would be filled with questions, but Cordelia couldn’t imagine any that she couldn’t answer for her.

What is my father really like?

Were you in love?

Why did he leave us?

Cordelia’s brain skidded to a crashing halt and she put her head in her hands to stem the fresh tears that welled in her eyes. She’d washed her hands of him when she’d tried to tell him she was pregnant and he had refused to listen. She’d said she didn’t care that he didn’t love her or that he didn’t want to know that they were going to have a child. And maybe she didn’t. Maybe she did. That didn’t matter. Calliope would care. Calliope would ask. Calliope would look at her with big, dark, serious eyes and want to know why her father hadn’t wanted her. What would Cordelia say? That he didn’t know? That she had kept Calliope for herself, her one precious, perfect person in this world? 

“I have to tell him,” she said as if the words cut the inside of her mouth as she spoke. “Good lord, I have to tell him. How do you tell a man eight years after the fact? I have to tell him and I can’t… What would you do? Gwen?”

Gwen nodded, grabbing a plate and taking a slice and placing in front of Cordelia. For flourish, she added a drizzle of the chocolate sauce she kept with the ice cream and topped off her coffee. 

What would she do? Gwen didn’t know. Given her past, Gwen had a higher likelihood of having been impregnated by a stranger than by someone she knew. She also had a tendency to run, so she’d have raised them as far from her life as possible. Gwen hugged her friend.

“Well, I frankly don’t know. I panic a lot so I probably wouldn’t have told him either. Telling Rudyard will save you from the scenario where Calliope finds out. You could tell him in a letter. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with something like that. But a letter or in person feel the fairest. And I’d tell him what he does is up to him. If he doesn’t want to step in, you can tell Calliope in your own time. You two got aunt Gwen, and I will fully beat his ass if I need to afterwards.”

What was a literature professor doing in Piffling Vale? Antigone hoped he wasn’t studying the boom in erotic literature written by locals. She really, really hoped that wasn’t it. She hadn’t considered that comic books and film and conspiracy might fit under the umbrella of “literature” and it fascinated her all the more. What kind of film? Did he watch French cinema or more mainstream things? There weren’t many mainstream things to be found on Piffling. Antigone reached for her water and began to gulp it down. She choked, sputtering and spitting water everywhere when he said that she was “pretty”.

Pretty? Her? 

Antigone Funn with her dark and wild hair, pale and dry skin, sleepless eyes, formaldehyde scented skin…. No one called her “pretty”. No one much noticed her, but those who did certainly never had a nice thing to say about her looks. She blushed deeply. Her hands clawed at her throat as she gasped for breath and then at her hair and mumbled to herself incoherently - “Oh god, oh god-” - before collecting her thoughts enough to scowl at this Jonathan fellow.

“Who put you up to this really?” she asked. “Was it my brother? Was it Chapman?”

He couldn’t honestly think she was “pretty”. No one ever did. 

“No one put me up to anything,” he said firmly, sitting back and crossing her arms. “And quite frankly, I’m offended you think I’d be an asshole like that.”

He’d had too many people put up to going out with him in highschool and college. Not unlike now, he’d been a nerd, but he was also so desperate to please and be a part of something even though he never quite fit in. Not with his family, not with his peers, and barely with his teachers. Graduate school was the first time he felt like he could trust people’s friendship and even then barely.

“Oh.”

Eric wanted to tell her about his first day in Piffling Vale, watching the funeral of Stanley Carmichael at a distance as it devolved into chaos - the brawling, the death of the widow as she fell into the fresh grave - and introducing himself to the Funn twins afterward; or maybe he wanted to tell her about offering to join forces with them after the murder trial business had been cleared up and how Rudyard had almost said “yes”, but Antigone refused. He wanted to tell her that he’d done his very best to become a part of the community and that the community had accepted him except for the Funns and Georgie, that he loved everyone in the village and was always striving to do good things for them. 

At least she realized some of it on her own. 

“I love this village,” he said. “I love the people of this village. I’m sorry I gave you the impression I didn’t. Is this about the Funns or is this about the coffee shop?” 

“About the coffee shop is what upset me. It really hurt my feelings, honestly. I felt like I had gotten to where I knew everyone had had my niche and then it felt like it was gone.”

That was probably it. Gwen always had he niche and Chapman had disrupted that, but he was coming to be her friend. Now, she poured him a cup of her good coffee, as she did now whenever Eric came in. It made her feel stupid now to have been mean to him; he was kind and handsome and not some villain trying to come through and destroy everything.

“I shouldn’t,” Cordelia said with a shake of he head. “If I had even one drink this early, you know how this village would talk.

She could easily imagine the whispers, calling her an alcoholic, the judgmental stares, the home visits from Agatha Doyle to be sure hers was a safe place to raise a child. Usually Cordelia embraced Piffling Vale’s eccentricity. Today she cursed it, thought it was a nightmare, a hell on earth. She slumped into her hands. 

“Should I have told him by now?” Cordelia asked. “Or Calliope? Even if he doesn’t deserve and explanation, she does, doesn’t she?”

“Then what from the case,” she smiled, elbows on the counter and her chin resting in her hand. “We got full stock since you’re early. Also fuck everyone in Piffling Vale. No one will know. I’m nothing if not discreet.”

Gwen wasn’t sure what to tell her in regards to Calliope’s paternity. Piffling Vale was too small and Rudyard lived here, not somewhere else. There was no handsome stranger as Gwen now realized she had always assumed.