Chapter 19
Soon after Sterling wakes up on this bright Saturday morning, he announces to an amazed Sara and then to his even more incredulous parents that he needs to go to church today: in his own way, he believes he’s been born again. Sterling’s desire to commune with God is unusual, and not just because it’s Saturday. Several local Greek Orthodox churches offer Saturday afternoon Vespers, if he feels the urge to attend – for a rare time in his life. Nor is this just an excuse for getting the car keys. Normally only two occasions in the year motivate Sterling, who is not inclined toward formal religion, to demonstrate his Faith. One is Easter – that is, Orthodox Easter which normally is a different date from its Catholic/Protestant counterpart (this year, 2009, the former follows the latter by a week). The other is his saint’s day on November 26. There is, of course, no Saint Sterling in Greek Orthodoxy (nor in Catholicism). Sterling, without the prefixed saint, is the boy’s name as it appears on his birth certificate, provisional driver’s license, his I.R.S. and business filings, etc. Sterling is not, however, the name he received at baptism; there’s a story associated with this discrepancy. Like so much in Sterling’s life, it is not a simple tale.
Traditionally, Greek babies (or babies of parents who were born into or converted to the Greek Orthodox Faith), do not receive a formal name until they are baptized. Sadly, in older times many newborns did not survive to baptism; so it was somewhat desirable to wait a bit for a healthy baby to be baptized (dead babies could be anointed before burial). In pre-modern Greece, infants before their formal baptism were sometimes referred to in the family simply as “Baby.” Baptism traditionally could occur months after birth; for some families there seemed to be no real rush. Once you were baptized, however, you were instantly a full member of the church and could take Eucharist. Unlike the other branches of Christianity Orthodoxy has no rigorous “confirmation” or “first baptism” instructional program. Many consider it a fairly laid back religion which, despite its rituals and a dose of pomposity at the top, allows at the grass roots a believer to arrange much of his communing with God through personal prayer, not requiring the intervention of an agent (deacon, presbyter or bishop). In modern day America Greek heritage babies are often baptized forty days after birth (the delay relates to provisions in old Jewish law about postpartum sanitation) at which time they become full members of the church. Children are baptized by a priest in a Saint’s name and they take his or her name for life. The Church does not offer trade-ins. Observant Greeks celebrate their saint’s name-day as they would celebrate their own birthday and often children have a party with those who share their given name. The Orthodox church, unlike the Vatican, is not unified; there are at least three conflicting patriarchs – in Moscow, Constantinople and Athens – and a number of lower divisions covering the disparate reaches of the world where Orthodox Christians live. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Greek Orthodox religion does not publish an authoritative list of saints. There is actually no formal procedure for achieving such status; sainthood is something you know when you see it, like pornography in that regard. Suffice it to say that Orthodoxy recognizes quite a few saints, four or five hundred in fact. Many have been assigned a calendar day (your saint’s day) on which he or she is celebrated. And people who are not named after a saint have a party on the appropriately named All Saints’ Day, eight weeks after Easter. All of the dead have had some saintly virtues; from that perspective all of us are saints. In any case, not being named after a saint is not a condemnation, at least for normal individuals.
As a tyke Sterling had surfed the web searching in vain for his eponymous saint. He found some 27 American municipalities sharing his name, including one just yonder, southwest of Charlotte (a low-middle income biracial neighborhood of single family cottages). The Social Security Administration told him that the name Sterling ranked 439th in popularity for American boys born in 1992 (and has been steadily falling in rank, to 901st in 2009). Another source estimated that 50,000 people bear the name of Sterling in the United States and a new Sterling arrives about every twenty hours. Among adult Americans Sterling is the 895th most popular name in the country (according to a name database of college educated men and women), which made the little S.P. Eumorfopoulos exceedingly proud to be in such a select fraternity. (Who would want to be just another Michael, top ranked with 54,360 born just in 1992?). Despite all the trivia acquired, he uncovered no Saint Sterling. This made the boy exceedingly annoyed. He ordered that his parents show him his baptism certificate. This demand produced not the certificate but rather a major row in the family, for no actual baptism certificate had ever existed. In fact he had never been formally baptized; “We just never got around to it,” his mother had explained. Susan raised a point of dogma: “As far as God is concerned, you don’t exist; Sterling’s not a saint’s name,” she had said, proud of the fact she was named after the Virgin Martyr Susanna, celebrated August 11th. She was immediately punished for the deadly sin of pride as well as for her astute, if likely incorrect, observation. His parents offered all sorts of lame excuses: his father was in Iraq when he was born, they were waiting for his return, then when he finally arrived stateside, he was hospitalized; the sets of grandparents disagreed on a baptism name to replace Sterling which was supposed to be only a temporary name (reflecting place of conception), despite the parent’s contention it was a permanent name. Each grandparent wanted to be his exclusive sponsor, but only on the condition the godparent could select the saint’s name. Familial and intergenerational rows escalated…in any case, by age eight Sterling had not yet been baptized and the name on his birth certificate had stuck. The boy was not appeased on learning this history, however. He was entitled to a Saint’s name day and he would not quit nagging until he got one. It was a matter of principle, he said. He had, in fact, located a saint, the closest aural relation to Sterling. This was Stylianos of Paphlagonia, the saint of children yet to be born, with his own Wiki page, thus making him legitimate in the boy’s eyes. Saint Stylianos was noted for his compassion toward children, especially orphans, and he always wore a smile. This saint was thus appropriate, the boy reasoned. Sterling smiled when he wanted to, and he didn’t mind children, being one himself. Years later Sterling would admit that Saint Stylianos had inspired him to oppose abortion, despite the grief he received on the subject from all his knee-jerk friends (save Daryl and the Trips).
Just entering church as Sterling Pandely Eumorfopoulos (in Greek tradition the father’s name is his child’s second name) and coming away baptized as Stylianos S.P.E. was, unfortunately, not possible. An adult wishing to convert to Orthodoxy must study church doctrine before he is chrismated; at some point only when the priest feels that the catechumen knows enough is he or she ready to be received into the church. Sterling’s parents wanted to argue that Sterling was only a child and should not have to jump through adult hoops. This argument would surely have been accepted by parish officials. Even at age eight, however, Sterling took offence at being considered “only a child”. Thus, he duly memorized the catechism (several hours of effort) and escorted his parents, to church. The older priest, who had married Catherine and Pandely, was away so they met with the newly appointed deacon, Fr. Emmanuel, a young man who lacked an impressive beard. Sterling made his request to be baptized the following Sunday and demanded an exam. If he had been given a multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blanks test, he would have certainly earned a perfect score. The priest, however, was convinced that, although the boy knew all the facts and could provide all the right answers on demand, he lacked a true Christian attitude. He failed to understand the essence of the Church; he failed to accept that Holy Communion was actually the body and soul of Christ, a belief fundamental to Orthodox Faith. Sterling had admitted so much to the priest, when he went off-text in his responses to questions from the catechism and contradicted the existence of miracles “and other religious hocus-pocus.” Fr. Emmanue
l, recoiling from such pagan terminology, had explained: “Holy Communion is strictly understood as being the real presence of Christ, his true Body and Blood mystically present in the bread and wine which are offered to the Father in his name and consecrated by the divine Spirit of God.” Sterling responded that he was too rational to accept the superstitious aspects of religion. “I believe in God; that’s enough of a leap of faith, isn’t it?” The priest told him that it wasn’t and that he must work on his beliefs. He should return to be baptized when he was ready. Sterling barked to his parents that he wanted the presbyter, not this “inexperienced decanol bureaucrat.” There was quite a row, with the parents (who were to blame for this mess in the first place) having to drag Sterling, who wanted nothing more than to be named Stylianos, away. Pandely later tried to give the church a donation, which the deacon contended was a bribe and refused to accept; the presbyter later accepted the check, knowing the goodness in Pandely’s heart. Catherine offered a suggestion. Without providing details she told Sterling to implore her parents to intercede. His grandfather needed little prompting and on the very day he was promoted by Sterling to godfather-presumptive, he drove Sterling to a nursing home where their retired and infirm archimandrite resided, the very man who had married them when they had arrived in America in 1960, a couple much in love, refugees, both orphaned young when their parents, Communists, had been murdered during the Greek Civil War. Sterling helped his grandfather bundle the retired priest into the car and they went together to the church where the old man, perfectly sound in mind and impressed with the fact Sterling could answer perfectly any question of catechism put to him, baptized him on the spot. That Sunday Sterling went up for Eucharist, baptism certificate in hand; the young priest from the earlier row denied to serve him, as was his doctrinal right. Sterling refused to budge and was prepared to make a scene (not for the first time in his life); his father had to forcefully remove him, hauling him off like a sack of potatoes. Susan later commented: “You can’t trick God with a piece of paper,” an observation for which she was not punished. Sterling, however, received the strap for his obstinacy, his duplicity, his theatricality, his arrogance, his self-centeredness, his lack of Faith and for general misbehavior unbefitting his age, having put Pandely in a rather foul mood. Over time – perhaps because Sterling’s nemesis priest failed to recognize the boy as he physically morphed into a man – the priest began to serve him holy communion; he still does so, on the two annual occasions Sterling goes to church.
Nine years later the boy, now fighting to be a young man, has vowed to work on those character flaws evidenced during his religious wars. His continuing lack of faith, however, troubles him. All his friends believe. North Carolina believes. The whole country believes. He doesn’t consider non-belief – whether heterodoxy or agnosticism, whichever applies to him – a character flaw per se; it nonetheless nags him. This is what motivates him to call the church and make an appointment for confession. Sterling does not need to explain to the family his reasons for going to church; his parents themselves are not model churchgoers, and religion, as well as politics, are generally not discussed in the family. They dutifully takes the car keys for his various chores.
While Brandon and Sara administer to the pee-wees’ needs, Sterling makes his daily run for food donations and deposits them for Sara. He then gathers up Bucephalus and together they go to the Vaney compound to sniff out some drugs. Despite the fact the dog flunked out of the K-9 corps’ anti-drug program, she still demonstrates a good nose when she works with Sterling (apparently only Sterling can engage the dog in police work). Together they find booze, cigarettes, weed, various pharmaceuticals as well as an expected large cache of illegal drugs – smokeable, inhaleable, digestible and shootable. Then he puts up a welcome home banner, with a note attached instructing the boys to immediately surrender any contraband that has survived his inspection “on penalty of reconfinement.” He signs it “love Sterling” without sarcasm. Before he leaves he fills up a plastic garbage bag with some changes of clothes to take away.
After he drops off Bucephalus at the vets for her annual check-up (covered by one of his parent’s numerous insurance policies – no other family, the boy figures, could waste so much on senseless premiums), he heads over to church. He did not bother to contrive his visit to get a young priest. He prefers to talk with his nemesis, who knows Sterling for what he is. Only a deacon when Sterling first met him, Father Emmanuel is now the man in charge, the presbyter, having replaced the older priest, who having retired, has died and presumably gone to heaven. The presbyter, himself, now has his own young deacon to train in his own image. He definitely does not want to talk with the new priest. Experience has taught Sterling to avoid stepping on the bottom rungs of the religious hierarchy, where he seems to commit more sins.
In the past seven years Fr. Emmanuel has aged only slightly. Still in his thirties, lean, with a full head of cropped black hair, his appearance has changed in only one aspect. His beard is much more impressive; it has been inching downward at a slow but steady pace. Sterling has seen the priest at least twice a year since their first encounter, always noting his maturing beard, so he really looks about the same to the boy. To the priest, in contrast, Sterling is not the same little tyke who gave him so much trouble. He’s now a big, troubled tyke, the priest reflects.
Sterling knocks, enters and makes a bow by reaching down and touching the floor with his right hand, then placing it over the left (palms upward), and says: “Bless, Father.” Struck by the lad’s formality, Fr. Emmanuel instantly rises from his desk and answers, “May the Lord bless you,” making the Sign of the Cross, and placing his right hand in Sterling’s hands. Sterling then kisses his hand. The priest then asks how he can aid Sterling and whether the boy wants to make a confession. Sterling asks Fr. Emmanuel how much time he can spare and, being given half an hour, he spends the first ten minutes summarizing his sinful past. Fr. Emmanuel is a patient listener, often being the only person his parishioners feel comfortable talking to. He’s content to give Sterling an opportunity to unburden himself. Sterling, for his part, admits he’s broken all the commandments save one.
“Murder,” Fr. Emmanuel offers, hopefully.
“Yes, all the others,” Sterling responds. He was thinking of saying, in regard to not having murdered anyone yet, that he was still young, but he figures Fr. Emmanuel not to be one to appreciate his sense of humor.
“Adultery?”
Sterling nods, understanding that having committed “immoral acts alone” was not what is being referred to. He doesn’t have the time to go into the details of how he lost his virginity. He summarizes the event – a lady nearly three times his age, whose pool he cleaned in his Speedos – in a single sentence, although one that is structurally compound-complex with 56 words and not a few dangling modifiers (the words flowed more from his heart, than his brain). Technically, Sterling is not sure whether the encounter counts as adultery in that the lady was between husbands, so she had said (untruthfully, as the papers had not yet been formally signed). Still, a lawyer as good as Stacy James would surely be able to get him acquitted before an ecclesiastical court on this particular sin, but in Sterling’s heart he feels he had erred that summer, five years before. The Institute’s second psychiatrist – the one obsessed with his sex life – had informed him that the affair constituted rape “statutorily and actually,” an analysis Sterling still refuses to accept. He may have been young and inexperienced, but he had not been forced to do anything against his will. Indeed, he was extremely willing, so willing that he willingly sinned several pool cleanings in a row. Fr. Emmanuel stops Sterling from offering more on the seamy side of his losing battle with the Ten Commandments.
“The gift of God’s forgiveness, although assured, is not magical. It does not automatically spare us from spiritual struggle - the continual vigilance against evil and the unceasing warfare against sin,” he says.
“Yes. I’m just beginning the struggle.”
“Preparation for Holy Confession requires a prayerful examination of feelings, thoughts, words, acts, attitudes, habits, values, priorities, goals, direction and way of life. This prayerful self-examination includes not only the personal religious life, but also family relationships, social activities, job conduct, business dealings, political commitments and even recreational pursuits, because our entire existence should be lived in under the light of the Holy Spirit is not to condemn ourselves, but to affirm our true selves in Christ who has given us access to God’s mercy and forgiveness and who has taught us to live for God’s glory.”
“I know, father. It won’t be easy. And I’ll forego Holy Communion until I’m ready to confess.”
“If all the Faithful did that, we’d never finish a bottle of wine,” Fr. Emmanuel says, trying to employ a bit of humor. Sterling appreciates this and smiles, unsure of whether that means he’s permitted to take the Eucharist or not. He’s not willing to ask the priest, given their history on the subject.
“To some people I’d recommend they write down their sins so they could reflect on them. I suppose you may have done that.”
Sterling pulls out from his backpack a thick spiral notebook, filled with his thoughts on this subject. He offers to give it to Fr. Emmanuel, who kindly refuses it.
“Confession is an ongoing process. It’s between you and God. I can advise you on some prayers and how to facilitate the process, but I don’t need to know all the details. But you can always talk to me if you don’t have anyone to talk with about personal life.”
“I have parents, a girlfriend, other friends, psychiatrists, teachers, lawyers. For my religious worries I only have you.
“Are you still having problems with Faith?” he asks.
“Yes, father.”
“Then, that’s what we’ll work on. It’s not my job to deny you Holy Communion. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, father.”
Father Emmanuel rises to open the door for Sterling to leave. The boy thanks him, his thoughts preoccupying him. He’s almost out the door before he remembers the ritual, says “Bless. Father,” is blessed and kisses the hand. He supplements the ritual with a “Thank you, Father Emmanuel” which, although unnecessary, comes from the heart.
Sterling does not know and may not know for some time whether religion will be important in his life. He knows that it is important for some people around him and less important for others. He suspects it’s not long before friends like William and Jeremiah stop believing in God altogether. The former will question how a God can allow such an unjust world; the latter, who sees the universe in terms of ones and zeros, can find no God in numbers. Sterling doesn’t know what he himself believes. He has been recently having more doubts than usual, not additional doubts about God but doubts about himself. As the boy’s belief in his own infallibility diminishes, the possibility of the likely existence of a Superior Being in the universe is starting to assert itself. Once upon a time, not long ago, he thought he knew, or could know, everything; but from a time dating back to Smiley Boy, he can now admit that he knows only one thing: that he doesn’t know everything.
Sterling has never much worried about money. That’s not just because he had access to his parents’ credit card, which he used freely, but reasonably. At least, his parents had never complained; after Smiley Boy he has only his ATM bit of plastic. Money was never an issue to him because he knew that he belonged to a very privileged class – American adolescents – who form the largest body of freeloaders on the planet. Sterling freely admits this and attaches no shame to the fact. He wrote a paper for an economics course on the amount of “intergenerational subsidy” that flows between parents and their children in North Carolina. The figure dwarfs the state’s entire budget for highways, prisons, welfare payments and the like. Just the parents’ toy budget in the state is certainly larger than the GDP of some small African country, a fact, however intuitive, Sterling could unfortunately not empirically establish. In any case, he found that Gambia’s annual GDP, at $440 per head, is less than the amount he calculated the average Carolinian spends on a child in a month, excluding cars, health insurance, plane tickets, college tuition and other big ticket items. What made his paper interesting and worthy of publication, however, was his finding that, using government data that he had pried out of a Washington bureaucrat, the reverse transfers, later in life, are miniscule. That is, children do not greatly support their parents as they reach the end of their lives. In other words, American parents take care of themselves, using savings, pensions, IRAs, profit from a house sale or welfare such as Medicare. Sterling concluded that the belief that raising kids pays off later when parents need their children’s support is mistaken, at least for North Carolina. Thus, discouraging poor people from having children makes sound economic sense. Liberal economists (almost oxymoronic to Sterling) might not like the boy’s insight, but then Sterling doesn’t think much of liberals, anyway, and generally ignores them. He gets enough liberal exposure at home: his parents. His paper was, indeed, published over the name of an Ivy League undergraduate in a peer-reviewed journal, with no mention of Sterling’s contribution (i.e., that he had ghost-written it for $350).
Sterling uses his ATM card to check his bank balance. Recently his balance has remained pretty steady at around $40,000, much of it proceeds from Apple that he has yet to reinvest. Formerly he worked the market on-line, but since The Punishment, he’s let everything slide. He’s eager to get back into the game as standing on the sidelines is costing him several hundred dollars a day in opportunity cost. He has a preliminary appointment next week with Merrill Lynch. He hopes they will accept him as a client, and if not, that they will at least accept his parents, his guardians, as clients. They have agreed to accompany him to the meeting. He’s soon expecting some major checks to be deposited in the family account. These will go toward covering his college expenses and he needs to plan an investment strategy that allows a stream of income for four or more years. Sterling has always been expected to figure out for himself how he can pay for college. From the time the family established the fact that little Sterling was a genius, it was understood that he would go to the best university possible, which translates as an expensive one. In admitting the boy was so bright, his parents had informed him he was also bright enough to figure out for himself how to pay for his post-secondary education. Sterling had no reason to object to this; it was reasonable. If he couldn’t figure out how to afford college, then he shouldn’t be allowed to go. From an early age he did not expect his parents to take care of him once he reached age eighteen.
Sterling fiddles around with the ATM to arrive at the balance of the family account. He is allowed (by both parents and bank) to do this but he is restricted from making transactions. He’s not doing anything sneaky, in other words. The only account he cannot access is his father’s boxing account. He doesn’t even know which bank that’s in.
As expected one of the insurance checks has arrived. The balance of the account has risen from $12,458.21 to $557,493.21. This does not bring a smile to the boy’s face, just an awareness that, thanks to his sister, he no longer must worry about how to pay for college.
The papers which Sterling had given over to Denis Brockton of Stacy James LC contained a letter from Dixie Carolina Mutual referring to the termination of Susan’s life annuity. With other things on his mind the boy had not paid much attention to the letter except to reflect that it would result in one less insurance premium for automatic salary deduction. Sterling’s parents, according to the boy, still had the mentality of Old Country arrivals, indeed just like his grandparents on his mother’s side. That mentality includes a fondness for nickel-and-dime insurance, the type that requires small monthly payments and can result in a bonanza if certain (highly unlikely) future events materialize. Of course, those types of events hardly materialize or el
se insurance companies wouldn’t be in business. Sterling would concede he doesn’t know much about insurance, but what little he knows has given him a fairly negative view of the industry. Thus he was happy to turn the annuity and other insurance matters over to the lawyer because that relieved the headaches involved in dealing with a bureaucracy of agents, claim adjusters and other leaches on society. At Brockton’s request, Sterling had gathered up the family’s insurance papers into a big bundle, and left them for the lawyer and his secretary to sort through (including Boo’s health insurance, which was mailed back to The Sterling, addressed to Miss Bucephalus Eumorfopoulos) . Sterling realized he and his family were paying a well educated professional to do clerical work for which he was certainly overqualified; Sterling had other things that interested him more and, although he never minded dealing with figures and calculations, he preferred not to deal with bureaucrats, a rubric that, as the boy aged, was becoming ever more enveloping.
Brockton had studied the annuity. The agent for Dixie Carolina Mutual who had drawn up the contract had been an army buddy of Pandely. Shortly after Sterling’s birth, his friend had shown Pandely a graph that projected the costs of higher education to rise extraordinarily in the next generation. Pandely, being a Durham Eumorfopoulos, was pretty much of an incurable pack-rat, and he had saved that projection and attached it with the insurance policy. The lawyer marveled at how accurate that projection turned out to be.
The family’s insurance contracts reflected, in part, fairly standard regular-payment annuities for both the children. In these instruments a life insurance company agrees to make a series of future payments to the buyer (annuitant) in exchange for the premiums they pay each month. In other words Pandely’s army buddy had concocted a savings plan for Susan’s college. Pandely had taken one out on Sterling, also; for despite the parents’ declaration that Sterling would be responsible for funding college, they were secretly squirreling away support. In each case the annuity would terminate when the child reached the age of eighteen, and a lump sum payment would be made (premiums plus earnings). What made these policies different from a regular college savings plan was that they had a life-insurance kicker. If either child died before age eighteen, the surviving sibling received $500,000, plus the annuity. In terms of the actuarial tables, there was only a slim chance of early death and the additional premium more than compensated the insurance company for taking added risk, spread over thousands of policies. Susan had died several weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday. Her death benefit was the amount recently deposited into the family’s account. The auto insurance claim was heading to litigation.
In a sense the life insurance policy was the opposite of longevity insurance: the shorter you lived the bigger the pay-out. If Sterling had been his father, of course, he would never have allowed himself to be talked into such a policy, which increased the premiums with about as much chance of a payout as the state lottery. Sterling would have found a better use for the money, convinced as he is that he is far better at investments than an insurance bureaucracy. Pandely, however, had followed his buddy’s advice (newborn Sterling was not yet capable of speaking his mind). Pandely didn’t know insurance from neuroscience, but he knew his friend to be honest. Indeed, he felt sorry for his buddy, and pity was more than just a contributing factor in buying these policies. It was probably the only reason he bought the insurance, which he did after more than a few beers. The buddy had survived the first Gulf War but he had demons. After his tour was up, he had enrolled in law school on the G.I. bill and dropped out before the end of the first semester. He had then tried his hand at journalism but that, too, had not panned out. So he resorted to sales, first Bibles door-to-door to rural North Carolinians. Eventually he gravitated toward life insurance, which paid better. One evening, after his second wife had left him, he had off loaded his problems onto Pandely, as if Pandely didn’t have enough problems of his own; after a few Scotch chasers, Pandely was committed to two separate college savings plans, masquerading as insurance policies. Pandely, in his son’s opinion, had acted like an idiot. Idiocy sometimes pays off.
With Boo riding shotgun, Sterling is starting the last of the day’s errands: Trip retrieval. He will pick up each brother from his rehab center and bring them back to The Sterling which will serve as a half-way house until their parents return in a few days. This was not his idea. Indeed, Sterling has mixed feelings about living under the same roof as the Trips; the boys were so insistent that they were ready for release that they had bullied him into convincing his mother this was the best decision. All agree the boys need a few days of careful monitoring; if they don’t pass muster, Sterling will be driving them back to the same institutions they have been forced to call home for the past six weeks.
Like her master, Boo (who passed her physical in grand form) has a complicated relationship with the Vaney boys. Whenever she sees them, she greets one with particular affection while she is utterly hostile to the other two. It’s as if she were protecting one from the others. Sterling has never figured out if Boo prefers one boy over his siblings – in other words, that she can tell them apart, perhaps by smell – or maybe that she picks out one at random to protect from his brothers. The first stop is the Duke Motor Plaza rehab where Connor Vaney awaits, all packed and ready to go. Boo totally ignores this Trip. Given the rehab’s proximity to home, Sterling suggests that Connor walk back to The Sterling, where Sara is preparing lunch; this suggestion is refused out of hand as the brother, despite an eagerness to snack, is impatient to unite with Zack and Jake. They thus head out to Piney Woods, Connor fidgeting as he nervously awaits the familial reunion. Sterling reviews all the rules that he has devised for the deviant brothers, including very limited parietal hours. They may each entertain a single girlfriend, in a public space, once for a maximum of two hours. Sterling has previously lectured each boy individually on the wickedness of his ways with their girlfriends, behavior which Sterling characterizes as “despicable, contemptible and probably illegal.” Each boy had silently accepted Sterling’s condemnation with due penitence. Zack had said that the drugs had controlled their libido. Jake had said that the girls had agreed to the musical bed - group sex arrangement, which “we never wanted you to find out about.” Connor had said it was the other brothers’ idea of a joke and he confirmed proudly that they were all still virgins. Obviously, the trio hadn’t had time to concoct a single fabrication of events; Sterling had caught them unawares. Connor then informs Sterling that he and his brothers would like to spend the night catching up, so they must sleep in the same room, as they do at home. Sterling responds that this wish could be granted only if Sterling lends them his room, the only one sufficiently spacious to accommodate them. Before Sterling can continue, explaining why he won’t do this, Connor thanks him profusely for being such a good brother. “To give up your own bedroom, now that’s a sacrifice,” Connor says, putting his arm tenderly around Sterling’s shoulder as he might do to one of his brothers. Sterling figures he’ll correct this misunderstanding with the remaining brothers; there is no way he will spend a night on the couch, alone, as Sara’s parents are in town to celebrate her birthday and the sleeping arrangements have been amended to accommodate their expectations.
Jake, who eagerly waits at the Piney Woods gate, is allowed to leave as soon as the guard recognizes Sterling in his mother’s hatchback. Jake hands off his belongings to Sterling, in the style of master to servant, while he and Connor hug. Boo is excitedly barking and nipping at Connor’s heels. Once they are all settled into the car (Boo being affectionately patted by Jake), they head over to the Anderson Clinic for the final pick-up. The brothers affectionately hold hands in the back seat. They remark on each other’s facial hair which has altered their appearances and they mockingly condemn Sterling for his deception, a ninth Commandment violation. Jake also instructs Connor that, after removing his “hideous” Van Dyke, his second job is to gain back his lost
weight. Institutional cooking has cost Conner about five pounds and Jake calls him a scarecrow to drive home the point. Connor accepts the assessment and then excitedly tells his brother than Sterling is kindly lending them his bedroom for the night; Jake offers his copious appreciation, mentioning what a kind brother Sterling is, despite the fact that he had imprisoned them, violating their rights by tricking them to sign the admissions papers. Jake had learned this fact from several coke-addicted lawyers who had become his rehab buddies. At Anderson they pick up Zack and repeat the performance: hugs, comments on facial hair, changes in weight. The brothers oink Zack, stroke his beard and call him an overripe peach. Jake then leads off a discussion on whether they should arrest Sterling for his falsely arresting them.
“North Carolina has no statute making false imprisonment a crime, but it is a crime at common law,” the jailhouse lawyer offers. “Furthermore, North Carolina does not permit citizen arrests but it does permit detention by private persons where probable cause exists that one has committed a felony, breach of peace, physical injury to another person, or theft or destruction of property,” Jake says to his brothers. They discuss whether they should detain Sterling on the spot and decide that the theft of their cell phones provides their strongest case. Sterling listens to this bemusedly. He returns their phones which, despite being identical, instant are grabbed by the correct owners. The boys decide, however, that they will let Sterling off this one time. “Everyone makes mistakes. He meant well. God forgives and so shall we,” they conclude. After a sarcastically offered “thanks,” Sterling says that Sara has invited over their girlfriends, despite his own strenuous objection. Sterling says he is still extremely upset about how the boys treated the girls in the musical beds episode. He had expounded his contempt at length to them each individually; now he addresses the culprits ensemble. The Trips giggle. Sterling exudes a flash of anger and pulls off the road, turns off the car and turns around to talk to them seriously.
“This was contemptible and egregious behavior,” he says flatly.
The Trips giggle again, commenting on Sterling’s skill at finding just the right 12-letter word. The have to look up the meaning of egregious after Sterling tells them its spelling.
Sterling sees no remorse among the brothers, who had each individually confessed their guilt during his earlier visits. This makes him extremely disappointed; he doesn’t know what to say. He can’t stand to look at them and turns back, trying to decide whether he should just dump them out here and forget about them altogether. The giggles continue from the backseat, infuriating him further. Without even bothering to look back at them, he barks:
“Get out of my fuckin’ car. You fuckers disgust me. I never want to see you guys again.”
They don’t move and just give him some tongue-clucking condemnation. Finally, Jake says:
“It was just a joke, Sterly. And don’t call us eff-ers.”
Sterling recognizes the words as emanating from Jake, Boo’s friend.
“It’s no joke, Jake, not showing your girl respect by having your brother’s…” Sterling says, pausing to come up with the right phrase. “…share in sexual intercourse. That’s pretty low in my book. Some would say rape,” he concludes.
“Sterling, it was a joke. Sometimes, you’re so thick.”
“Sterl, you know we’ve always said we’ll wait until we’re married, haven’t we? I mean we come close, but we never violate our promise.”
“Very close.”
“Very, very close,” Jake offers. His brothers give him an evil eye. Jake seems to be suggesting he needs some brotherly assistance to keep him on the straight and narrow. His remark will necessitate a full revisit about what is permitted and what is disallowed in the Trip world of repressed sexuality.
“Yeah, Sterling, we’d never break the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Commandments as well as fib to Oprah. Surely not in syndication!”
“I know what I saw, you liars,” Sterling shoots back. “And I found the evidence, nine fuckin’ condoms.”
Zack turns to Conner and says: “I told you he’d find them. You of so little faith.”
“But I take the credit for making them look so real,” Jake chimes in.
“They were real,” Sterling shoots back.
Together the boys cluck at Sterling and guffaw while they torture him. One of them says: “Pig semen.” They continue to oink.
“Pig semen?” Sterling asks. He recalls the bottle he had found. “That’s what was in the bottle?”
“Bought on-line, next day UPS.”
“You weren’t supposed to find the bottle. Lucky we tore off the label.”
“My idea,” Jake says proudly.
“And what about the bracelets. Nine of them.”
“That was my idea,” Zack adds. He turns to his brothers: “I told you it’s a lot more difficult to fool Sterl than it used to be. Either he’s getting smarter or we’re loosing our touch.”
“But you came out the washroom, you’d changed shorts. One was on backwards and the slippers.”
“Pee-flap my idea,” says Connor.
“I get credit for the slippers,” says Jake.
Sterling feels really, really dumb. He looks at the boys who are still smiling and joking about their mischievousness.
“And the drugs. They were fake, too?” Sterling asks.
The boys clam up.
“And you were high, right?
The boys don’t say anything. Finally, one nods his head and the others join in.
“Did you want me to find the drugs?” Sterling asks.
The boys nod in the negative but then Connor says:
“In group I said that I thought maybe we did want you to find them. We wanted help. But, being three, we always go with the flow.” He turns to his brothers:
“If one of you had made the suggestion to stop or to get help, I would have agreed. It’s just that everything snowballed. And we’re under a lot of pressure with the concert tour. We can’t go back to our old ways.”
His brothers nod.
Jake continues: “Sterly. My counselor said that I turned to the only person I could trust, because I couldn’t turn to my brothers because I’d lost faith in them.”
“Your counselor told you that,” Connor asks somewhat annoyed.
“My group told me we have a love-hate thing with Sterly and every time we hate ourselves, he’d be the one we’d go to to punish. She also said we should apologize for all the tricks we’ve pulled. Especially with Boo,” Jake says, petting the dog.
“Your dad whipped us for what we did to Boo.”
This is news to Sterling. Sterling waits for someone to continue. Connor says:
“We felt so bad after you father whipped you, right in front of us all, that a few days later, after we had told mommy and daddy what we had done, we were sent to see your father. Our parents told him to treat us like he would treat you.”
“And dad took the strap to you?” Sterling asks, trying to soak in this turn of events.
“Three times each. Connor was the last one and he got so nervous waiting that he peed in his pants.”
Connor doesn’t like that this has been revealed and says:
“I told you. It was intentional so I’d get mercy. It didn’t work. He hit me harder and made me mop up the floor.”
“And after that Boo has only liked me,” Jake says. “And the trick was my idea,” he adds, about to sob. His brother place their hands in his, providing enough comfort so he gains composure.
“It’s we who should be mad at you, thinking we’d be capable of sleeping with each other’s girls. You really have such a low opinion of us?” Zack asks.
“Maybe you should stop playing tricks on me,” Sterling suggests. He starts the car and they drive off.
After lunch the Trips shave and shower and return in identical attire, distinguished only by their variance in weight. This flaw they have already s
tarted to correct. Jake gave half of Zack’s lunch to Connor, making them both miserable. After lunch Sterling leads them to the side yard where they help him toss the last of the construction rubbish into the dumpster, completing an older sentence that had been delayed, given subsequent events. The brothers continue to compare notes on their incarceration, while Sterling apprises them of his own legal problems. On their cell phones they check out the Smiley Boy Legal Defense Fund page. After playing the video, they exchange looks and stare agape at Sterling. He expects their condemnation but they won’t offer one. Rather they note that he’s raised $1.2 million dollars and remark that they are in the wrong profession. There’s more money in film than concerts, something they will have to take up with their agent, manager, lawyer and parents. Sterling asks whether they don’t have any moral comment to make, to reciprocate his own judgmental abuse of them over the past weeks concerning their girlfriends. They shake their heads in unison. No comment whatsoever, he asks. In unison they offer but one word: “stupid.” Sterling nods his head in agreement and says: “yeah, stupid.”
The party comes off without a hitch. Sterling permits each Trip ten minutes of privacy with the girlfriend of his choice in his, now purloined, bedroom. Finally, the girls and other party guests leave; the Trips spend the night together, sometimes laughing, sometimes arguing, mostly in conversation. Sterling is consigned to the couch; Sara’s gets her room and her parents sleep in the two bedrooms on either side.
Sunday has acquired its own routine over the long, hot summer. After a late breakfast Sterling takes his habitual bike ride to the Durham Correctional Center, always being one of the first visitors to arrive. He will spend an hour with Daryl before he goes on to ultimate practice, located in the adjacent park. The administrator of the minimum security prison has waived provisions to allow Sterling, an unaccompanied minor, to visit. He usually brings snacks which Sara has prepared. Daryl is a popular inmate, both with fellow inmates and with visitors; there are always members of his church dropping by to see him after Sunday service. Daryl is making the most of his stay. He spends a lot of time proselytizing his fellow cons. Negotiations between the DA and his attorney Mr. Aaron led to Daryl’s pleading guilty to felony hit and run and misdemeanor death by vehicle; he was given a twenty month sentence. If he had chosen to go to trial, which was his lawyer’s initial advice, Daryl would probably have received a lighter sentence, reduced in part due to his diminished capacity, in Sterling’s opinion. Daryl, however, said from the outset that he was guilty and that’s how he pleaded. Daryl had not struggled over his plea; guilt was firmly established in his own mind; that’s what counted. To make amends Daryl was acting the role of missionary to his fellow inmates. He had created a non-sectarian Bible study group and he had arranged an ad-hoc group therapy for his dorm mates and had asked fellow church members to try to find them jobs. In sum he was content and at peace with himself, which is more than Sterling, free on the outside, could say for himself. For his own part Sterling had struggled a full twenty hours to arrive at the plea to give his lawyers: not guilty on indecent exposure; not-guilty on dissemination of harmful material to minors. If he had pleaded guilty to both, he would have likely earned a misdemeanor conviction, a $1500 fine, 100 hours of community service and a psych workup. He almost went for the deal, but at the last minute he changed his mind for reasons he was still not clear about, but certainly having to do with principle. As a result both cases are in a pre-trial phase and the legal team, already conceding an inevitable defeat at the District Court level, are salivating over the requisite appeal although Stacy James is constantly warning his staff about horses and carts, counting chickens, biting and chewing, leaping and looking. Their unstated goal remains the same: to challenge Miller v. California, which still sets the definition of pornography since 1973. The appeal, Smiley Boy Productions et al. v. United States of America, may or may not happen despite the firm’s toil (and Sterling’s donators’ money, most of which comes unsurprisingly from the adult entertainment industry). Given this backing the legal team is sparing no expense as they try to make a dent into the boy’s legal defense fund.
After an invigorating ultimate practice Sterling bikes home and spends the afternoon in the gym with his father. Sterling, who has retired from amateur boxing, is no longer on a rigorous training schedule. His loss to Buffeau in the second round of the Under-19 was surprising but, in hindsight, Sterling wonders how he managed even to fight, given how he had been starving himself in order to make weight. He had no energy. He got through a first round opponent only because of a low blow disqualification. In their match Brandon, who was not a very disciplined fighter, was awarded a close decision; Pandely had scored his son the victor. As it turned out Brandon was then severely thrashed by his next opponent, Sam White, who went on to win the tournament. Brandon quickly followed Sterling into retirement – shadow that he has become; neither expect to compete in the summer’s P.A.L. tournament. They are, however, working with the middle Hernández as well as Pandely’s bantam, who roundly defeated all his taller opponents and brought home the belt, which is displayed in the trophy cabinet of Vegas Gym.