Fourth Chair
Chapter Three
By Missy

TITLE: Fourth Chair
PARTS: Three of Undetermined
RATING: PG-13 for one adult reference and one mildly salty word; use caution.
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, FG and Kai so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Â Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

CATEGORY: SOL
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FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne and Lenny's daughter may be a great cellist in the making; one whose intelligence makes them feel both blessed and mystified. Can they possibly let her go to New York alone?'

****

"Mr. Kosnowski, be reasonable."

"Yer askin' me for reason when you want to send my little girl halfway across the country?!" Lenny cried.

Sister M.E. grunted in frustration. "Mister Kosnowski, I cannot allow you to waste your daughter's exceptional talent."

"There's a big difference between wastin' my girl's talent and sendin' her so far away that we'll never get to see her no more!" Laverne added.

"There's a lotta stuff you don't understand, Sister," Lenny added nervously, "Aria ain't gonna want to go. She's got one good friend, and she ain't gonna want to leave her. And there's some other stuff..."

"Yes, I'm aware of the passing of Missus Kosnowski's father, and of your more recent troubles."

Lenny looked to his shoes, as Laverne wrapped an arm around him.

"We just don't think that this is the right time."

The sister sighed. "Very well, then. We'll leave the brochures with you, however, and the offer remains open."

Lenny nodded. "Thanks, Sister." He helped Laverne out of her seat and exiting the office. They found their daughters where they had left them, only Aria was halfway finished with her homework.

"Ready to go?" Laverne asked her daughter. Lenny stood silent, somewhat amazed that he had sassed a nun. How do you confess that?

Aria rose her head from the mass of problems before her; Christian had commenced chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen, which her mother fetched from her mouth.

"Yes." She stowed away her belongings, and when Lenny tried to pick up her backpack, she quickly pulled it free of his grip.

***

They tried to keep conversation lively as they made their way to McDonalds. Aria seemed unsettled, as though she knew what was up. They bought dinner, taking it home to split on the kitchen table.

Lenny listened vaguely to Laverne's complaints about her boss as they pressed through the streets of Walnut. He remembered how quiet the town had been when he and Laverne had moved in; now, as the town died, it was almost a ghostly place, haunted by the life that had once been but had since gone on.

Aria seemed to resist saying what bothered her, and when they settled at their cozy kitchen table she only pretended to pay attention as he told her about how badly fixing the truck was going. It gave Lenny a good excuse to pick through his salad and wolf down his plain burger, something that caused Laverne to give him the evil eye until every limp vegetable made its way down his throat.

He turned to Aria again; Aria, who, as almost fanatical as she could be in her devotion, the anxiety of his appearance at the school still rung through her head. When she daintily finished her burger, she turned to her parents and said.

"It is okay, if you are getting divorced."

They sighed simultaneously. "Len," Laverne grunted. "Tell her."

He gave her a look of pure disappointment before beginning. "Sweetie, yer ma and I saw the principal today. She...wants us to send you to Interlochan."

"We think it's a real good idea," Laverne added. "She said that yer...wastin' yer potential."

Panic crossed the young girl's face. "Interlochen...in New York?" He nodded. "No!"

"That's what we said." He noted, with satisfaction.

"How could they...but how could YOU?!" She cried, standing up, her fries in hand. "I do not want to be that far away from you! Why did you not tell her no?"

"We just want ya ta think about it, Ari."

"I cannot!"

"But it wasn't us! The Sister just..."

"I can not go! I cannot!"

"Sweetie." Laverne tried to soothe her daughter, but she pulled away.

"You know I cannot leave you! You know that! How could..." She turned, running upstairs with tears streaming down her face. As she rushed upstairs, her footfalls were a thunderous storm as they pounded overhead. The sound of her door closing rattled the house.

"Aria! Aria Marie..." Lenny's voice was cut off by a blast of Green Day from her room. "Hah!!" He bellowed. "I WORKED on that demo, kid! It ain't bothering me!" The music halted, and when it was replaced by the sound of Marilyn Manson encouraging obscenity, Lenny sunk downward, groaning. Christian burbled, happily banging her spoon against the tray of her highchair.

Laverne sighed. "She ain't gonna want to talk to us for awhile."

"Yeah. Whatt're we gonna do about that?"

Laverne dumped her leftovers into a wastebasket, peering into their backyard. "It looks like a Corona night out there."

He smiled to himself. "Definitely." He picked up Christian and followed his wife outside, Laverne carrying the Coronas to the porch.

Lenny gently placed his daughter on his left knee, accepting a Corona from his wife. Christian reached for the beverage, which he quickly put out of her grip. "Uh-uh. Not 'till you're twenty-one, kid."

Laverne took a long draught from her own, and from the way she leaned Lenny could tell she was trying to block out the vauge rattle of Ginger Fish's bass that echoed from inside the house.

"Where did we go wrong, Vernie?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Len, we didn't do nothin' wrong. We got a great kid in there."

He scratched his ear with the lip of his bottle before taking a drink. "Yeah, I know. She's been so weird after...you know what happened."

"Len, you don't have to not say it. You had a heart attack."

He winced at her words, because he had avoided saying it himself. The part of him that jumped into action and minimized the pain he felt spoke up. "Yeah, and my hair's fallin' out, and I'm fat."

Laverne's knee rubbed his, a motion that never failed to cause sparks within him. "You had a heart attack, two months after her grandpa died of a heart attack. She doesn't wanna leave because she's afraid you'll die."

Lenny winced against his wife's words, knowing hers were of the utmost truth. Christian had curled up against his chest, her thumb crammed into her mouth, falling slowly to sleep. They had all become so painfully darling to him that he didn't want to remember that awful day.

"How do you know?"

"Cause...I've lived there, Len. I know how hard it is."

He rubbed his knee against hers. "I'm sorry ya had to marry a bum horse, Vernie."

Her green eyes glowed. "Len, you ain't a bum horse." She scooted closer to him on the deck. She whispered softly, "Bum horses don't kiss their lady horse friends in closets during their starlet friend's birthday parties."

He horse-laughed. "Hey, that wasn't me! That was the funny brownies. 'Sides, I was hidin' from Dennis Hopper."

"I'm glad you had 'em, Len. I'm glad I made out with you at that party."

"'Cause you wouldn'ta looked at me twice?"

She nuzzled his stubbly cheek. "Because I didn't want to wait any more, to be your girl." She offered him a sip of her Corrona.

With a smile, he took it.

**

When they entered the house again, Christian was fast asleep, and the house was eerily quiet. Laverne took Christian to bed, Lenny peeked in on Aria.

He found the girl curled up under the bed, her pink hair lying in curls on the pillow, the only part of her visible beneath a dark purple quilt. She stared at the wall, as though memorizing the nuances of her James Marsden poster.

"Night, sweetie." He started to pull her door closed.

Her voice came, thin and frail. "Daddy?"

The door opened a bit more. "Yeah?"

"This may sound babyish...but could you tell me a story?"

A smile crept across his face as he opened the door and carefully sat down on the bed. "Once upon a time," He whispered, "there was a big old apartment in a town called Milwaukee..."






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