Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:06:03 -0800
From: Timothy Stillman <comewinter@earthlink.net>
Subject: The Terryberries

			    "The Terryberries"

				    by

			     Timothy Stillman


The Terryberries were monks in the hood. The
Terryberries were punks in the ghetto. The Terryberries
were a fright to behold. The Terryberries were an alien
duet from the Moon. Mostly, though, the Terryberries
were rich brother and brother, age 12 or thereabouts. And
mostly they were bored out of their mind in, of course,
Terrytown this fine night of winter frost.

Their parents, Abe and Maureen, were entertaining their
entertainment challenged cheerless crowd of lout rich
friends in the blue period wall to wall elegant parlor where
they consumed alcohol and other assorted charms that
might be gotten into the system in a myriad of ways.
There in the glass house with the glass pink chandelier and
the glass full length mirrors all over the place and the
silver black grand piano with glass cases folding over
protective- like photos of the Terryberry family smiling
toothily, and ancestors, not so toothful, from lofty old
somewhere or other.

And the Terryberries could not be defeated, Ike and Zan,
because they were curious little curlicues around which
their most unfortunate names came and collected them
and made them a quirk here in Derryville Manor Estates,
which was a big name for a little pond of nouveau riche
who were never terribly sure how they got to be newly
rich in the first place.

The Terryberries lay on the second floor hardwood, natch,
and they looked down between the slats of railings of pine
wood, natch, at the people below. All doctors down there
in some field of hidey ho or thereabouts which impressed
each other and the schools, the hospitals, the mental
facilities, the universities they were each stuck into as a
plum is stuck into a pudding, Christmas or no. And they
were filled to the gills with smoked salmon, which Ike and
Zan didn't get a bite of at  all, at all,, but had to eat dry
turkey sandwiches in their room.

And those buffoons down there were stuffed with straw in
their party clothes which cost more than the national GNP
of some third world countries, all there in their white and
black, though their flesh managed to always be around
only flesh like the others, somewhat nubby orange. Oh,
they flashed their  ice cubed liquor sloshing smelly glasses
and they flashed their watches and their teeth went tick
tick tick as their tonsils offered up little soup tureens of
words that everyone there on the couches and chairs and
throw pillows, all so carefully and so stiffly and casually
arranged, thought was tres gauche.

As the Brothers Terryberry looked at each other in the
darkness of the second floor where they were sequestered
with their computers and TVs and CD players and DVD
players and their DVDs (only Criterion classics would do)
and each other for it was each other they liked to play
with the most. For they gave each other strength. To set
off stink bombs. To pull the tail of the cat at the most
inopportune moment, the most opportune for them
though. These little hellions that the Derryville Manor
Estates didn't like one little bit.

But the Terryberries pater and mater were the most of the
nouveau riches in income if little else, so their guests put
up with what was to happen, tried to prepare themselves
for it, for actually it was nothing new to them, this kind of
tomfoolery, and did nothing when the little boy devils ran
to the dining room earlier this evening, where all the
swells were supping and chatting boringly--oh pish posh,
oh deery me, hand me another of those divine rolls would
you Rupert darling?, there's a dear-- at the long dining
table with its delicious, pleasing to the eye and taste buds,
foodstuffs heaped hotly and tantalizingly aromaed on
plates, its wine glasses sparkling in the smaller chandelier
glow overhead,  the table covered with linen, and golden
candle lit:

Thus entered the Terryberry boys who turned round,
pulled down their pants, bent over and mooned the highly
offended morally monocled lot of them, gasps and shivers
and good grief, I never--well, boys will be boys: Routine 3
C, thought one guest, hi ho.

And the Terryberries giggled as they began to, brazen
boys, pull up their pants in now shell shocked silence of
nose turning uppers, just as Taffy the Maid was bringing
in the silver coffee urn and the so very delicate cups from
some other century of China, all on a silver precious to be
sure tray, and saw what these miscreants were doing, and
threw the whole kit and caboodle up in the air in horror
and screamed like a fire engine--as the little ruffians who
should know better finished pulling up their pants up and
ran like hell to the second floor, knowing nobody would
dare pursue them. Because nobody ever did pursue them.

Well, it caused the air to be ironed like stiff linen. And the
guests wanted to say get rid of these far too indulgent in
the extreme parents, get rid of these kids who are like
monkeys in a zoo. But they could not. Because the
Terryberries senior, Dad at least, owned the bank, which
owned the estate, the town, and the people who lived in
the town. So the villagers could not raise their burning
torches and storm the tower in anger.

Because they lived in the tower and there are less pleasant
things to give homage to than those two little winsome
dollops of frivolity and jazzology who put the memories
of fleeting or long flown youth in their cups and made
them drink deeply from the ambrosia therein, except it
seemed to be more like a taste of seltzer water shooting
out of a flower on a clown's coat lapel.

Thus once again pretending to have noticed nothing at all,
not the blanched what are we to do? faces of the parents,
not their own tiresome outrage, they tried to pick up
where they left off before they were so rudely interrupted.

Kill, the guests thought. Kill, the host and hostess
thought, as they helped Taffy with the breakage of things
as she flittered here and flittered there and became kind of
a ghost of some ancient comedy that was of course never
seen by right minded people these days. W.C. Fields
would have loved her.

Later:

The boys watched, from the second floor, the guests in
the parlor. The boy Terryberries were the spiders spinning
their web. And the gold coins they tossed down invisibly
on the oddly angled and seemingly so short and small
people from this height, considered their next "highly
original coup," while their victims waited for the next
whoopee cushion, for the next shaving cream pie in the
face, for the next spaniel to fart in old Miss Lacy's class,
entrance made through the windows left strategically open
by the Terryberries on the hottest day of the year.

Gag and laugh. Puke and guffaw. Yes, they were quite a
caution. They took nothing seriously. When Peggy
Gernpoke got married to Davey Dukedoyle, on their
wedding night, mind you, when Peggy and Davey were in
their new home, doing what they had been doing for three
years but this time legally, the Terryberries had somehow
commandeered the happy young couple's (though to tell
you the truth, they were getting kind of long in the tooth,
and bored with each other by now) undergarments and
hung them out to dry on their flag pole so the whole
world would see them when the sun shown again on the
morrow, and a good put out red faced time was had by
all.

"They think they are so damned smart," eye glasses free
Ike said to thick glasses doomed Zan, who everybody
called Zen, because they were all rich and pretended they
read those expensively bound leather volume books
bought by the yard like wall paper, in their much highly
overrated libraries. Probably fake books to boot.

Ike never called Zan Zen, because it was declasse, he
thought, and there were some levels to which a highly
intellectual child who wore his school clothing, coat and
tie included, in pride and dexterity and poshness that he
knew his parents and his classmates and their parents
hungered for, would never stoop to doing. Mostly he
called Zan booger, cause it pissed Zan off and that made
Ike laugh real big time.

Though they read a lot, Ike and Zan didn't quite know
what the appellation kids gave to them of the word
"fruits" quite meant.  They were also told by those who
were in the lesser grids of wealth herein noted that maybe
they should show up on the Jerry Springer show.

Of course, the brothers had no idea who that was, and
little idea what television was, save for nature programs
and DVDs like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and the
occasional guilty pleasure Nick at Night programming,
and they warm and safe in their cocoon of ivory and glass
and marble world with all the correct paintings hung on
the wall and all the correct sculptures in the foyer and the
living room, that Mom Terryberry made none too well,
but always of figures of antiquity, even if you couldn't tell
just who they were, in her little workshop. Zeus?
Aphrodite? Who knew? The guests oohed and ahhed and
waited for Mom Terryberry to give them a clue.

The little workshop that had the darling wall of window
and half ceiling of same that captured the setting sun on
the river blue, all like a painting all in depths of wonder
and nostalgia so colorful and haunting you could just
about drown in the art of it, the sheer noblise oblige
beauty and wonderment of it.

Where Mom Terryberry bedded down on a mattress in the
closet, tiny it was, of that workroom, with the principal of
Precise Heights School, name of Mal Mandrake. An open
secret to everyone but Mr. Terryberry who lived in
ledgers and computer printouts all the live long day, ten to
three. Then golf for three hours. Then home to his most
satisfied wife who he did not have to satisfy, to his
immense relief. He thought it was just her time of life.
And not Mal Mandrake cutting a rug with the Terrryberry
boys' female progenitor.

The Terryberry boys were hot house plants. They held
hands everywhere. They were never one without the
other. They bathed together. They slept in the same room,
though not always in the same bed. They ate together.
Went to Parson Persimmon's church together each
Sunday. They studied together. They needed the touch of
each other. And as pre adolescence drew its strings to a
close, they discovered there were things they could do
together that made them believe they were far more
satisfied than Mom was with Mr. Mandrake who was not
what you would call inordinately good looking. Or a big
ball of fire either.

The Terryberries were terrors. But they were sissy terrors.
Which didn't matter. Because all the kids here were sissies
as well. But the others never hung in the hammock with
sis or bro either. So the Terryberries' main chagrin, which
they didn't notice, became their major mainstay--their
daring leap into incest, though the Terryberries had no
word for it, would not have known it if it had bent down
and biting them in their royal yellow school crests on their
plum color school coats.

So being girly meant being masculine. And doing things
unspeakable with your bro meant doing things that made
everyone respect you while at the same time it made
everyone want to stay the hell away from you. Well, not
you, it's the Terryberry brothers I'm talking about.

Mr. McGrew (those old enough to remember the cartoon
character on TV who sold beer and lightbulbs and played
Ebenezer Scrooge in an animated version of " A
Christmas Carol") (many of those who remembered that
could still feel wistful and could still sing a few bars of
young Scrooge's song, "When You're Alone in the
World,") called him Mr. Magoo, though not to his basset
hound face, for he had a sour sense of humor which meant
he had none at all, and could honk that monster nose to a
farethewell when he was bored. And he only was not
bored when he talked.  Always and endlessly about his
favorite subject: himself. And talked. And talked.

The boys heard waves of his nasal voice floating up to
them, "You know that damned Walt Disney. Ever notice
how in every picture, every cartoon, every nature film, he
made and all the ones that were made after, there was
always some butt joke. I mean the Christers are going
after Disney three ways from Sunday on a pogo stick
named Bubba, but they never mention this. You'd think
they would. I been watchin' Disney movies all my life and
I noticed it when I was a young kid. Started making notes.
Got a big compendium of them by god." His voice slurry
and burpy and tongue control lost.

Then he drank some more wine, lay his head back on the
plastic covered pink couch, (the Terryberries had money,
taste and furnishing sense was another matter) his body
half off it, and promptly went to sleep, dropping his glass
and spilling a tiny bit of wine onto the hard wood flooring.

The boys looked at each other. He was: A butt freak. A
Disney freak. He was drunk. God. This was great. He
never would have said this stuff if he hadn't been totally
plastered. They'd blackmail him. But he was the head of a
construction company. What could he have they would
possibly want? But still, it was too good to pass up. They
already had themselves. They had more money than he
did. Or at least their parents did.

But if they could blackmail him for a lot of extra money,
then, with that money, they could hire a hit man to kill
mater and pater. But it would only make it all worse.
Remember the Menendez brothers. Hmmm..what were
two little hellions to do?

The boys lay side by side. They gave the pinky swear
about that. They lay in their underoos. Zan in Spiderman
underoos. Ike in Batman underoos. They each hated
Superman in any incarnation or incantation at all, from
comic books to movies to personal boy wear.

"I shall jump off the railing and into the party." Zan.

Ike, goggle eyed. "What???"

"Just playing with your brain, bro."

"Booger."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

So they tussled. For a time. Though silently. They did
everything silently. And more and more, in the dead of
night, one or the other would come to his brother's bed,
across their little boy room with the Pooh characters
wallpaper, which made them retch these days, but mom
and dad refused to see their sulky surrogates as anything
but her precious little darling babies straight from heaven
above, and they would make love, though they didn't
know it was called that, very quietly.

They were a curious amalgam of knowledge, smart ass
quaking all the while faking it, bravado, and totally silly
innocence. But there it was. They were having each other
on. A recent development, this love making, but quite full
now, quite satisfying, quite wonderful and incandescent.
All they knew was it made them feel less alone in a very
hollow very Barnum and Bailey world, though they
wouldn't have known what that meant either.

A little flame to keep the cold winter winds outside and in
those supposed adults down there in toy play grown up
land at bay.

They held to each other. Their bare pale warm chests and
stomachs of very naughty flesh in this warm toasty house
adhered boy to boy. They felt good together. Up here,
watching the tall people below them become very short
indeed. These oh so self important people who could not
bring themselves to believe they could ever be inferior to
old money riches, which was Jenning's Landing two miles
away which put this place in poverty row by comparison.

The adults muddled and half drunk and some more so
talking about books and writers they and the critics went
on about without ever reading. To prove they were still
cool, some mentioned some of Peter Travers' "Rolling
Stone" movie reviews and pronounced he was a man of
great learning and with a hand on the real pulse beat of
America, the real kind, the kind that counts, and deep,
very very deep.

And the boys tickled each other, as some ofay oompahed,
shot his shirt cuffs, in high importance, then put his hand
on the top of the mantle as the fire made a rosy crackling
wood smoke back ground,  and he continued to oompah
about stocks and bonds and Martha Stewart and what the
Tokyo market meant to Standard and Poor's and the
farmers in the mid west, if you want some insider trading
tips.... Though everyone was in their own little clump and
paid him no never mind.

They boys laughed silently, and touched and conjured
their own magic, and they weren't mischievous at this
point. They were rather endearing and kind and they had
of course don't ask doe eyes and they held the sides of
their faces together and they put their legs together, they
tangled, and were quite for a time in their underoos as
they felt somewhat wuzzy and sleep hazed, and didn't
want their parents to find them up here asleep. But they
fell asleep often during party nights, gazing between the
railings at the same old rerun parties down below.

 Their parents would carry each one gently as warm bread
just out of a summer oven to their room and put them in
their individual beds.

Mater Terryberry would gaze down at her sleeping angels.
And she would not think of her little love fetes with three
different men, though at different appointed times of
course, she was of the horsy set which called for a certain
propriety in affairs after all;  and we couldn't have her
biting off more affairs than John O'Hara could chew into
those massive books of his after all.

And Pater Terryberry would look down at his own angels
too. And he would see something more than money pits
who would bleed him dry about half way through their
projected stay at Yale one fine day. He would see them as
what kept Mater and Pater together, would even think
warmly and nostalgically of the Terrible Terryberries
stunts pulled on the guests and especially on Taffy in her
maid uniform like out of a TV show, like Hazel.

Though he would have to tell her to tone down her
reactions a bit. She was getting too obvious. This was not
a prolonged screen test, after all.

Because all the adults who knew the Terryberry boys did
the same. They played into the Terryberries tired routines.
Outraged yes. But still part of the landscape they were
trying to get used to.

The boys' jokes always fell flat. They were mostly stupid
jokes. And always unfunny. They went on too long or too
short. They had no punch line. They were old as the hills.
Even the children played into the Terryberry routines.

 They hated the Terryberry boys for themselves. They
hated them because they were fruits sleeping with each
other.  They just guessed. They happened to be right. It
wasn't a big leap of logic, however. The Terryberries
were silly asses who went around handholding, with the
occasional thumb sucking now and then, thank god so far
it was always their own thumbs they sucked..

And yet, and yet, as Dr. Garber, the one down there in the
parlor, eating his pipe as he leant over with his knobby
hands together and discussed the finer points of
psychopathology or something with a young woman
kneeling at his feet, whose bosom he was looking down,
for the blouse required it and the bosom was large,  she
brainlessly attempting to absorb every word, (mostly she
liked men, even this mechanical robot, to look down her
blouse) as though he were Socrates or something, would
put it, they were enablers of kids no one could stand or
understand. Course Dr. Garber too was an enabler.

They all had it in their power to destroy the Terryberry
boys if they wanted to. Maybe the one fine day of it kept
them going. Setting up the boys for their biggest fall.
Maybe that would make this worth it.

But not if they could see Zan and Ike sleepy eyed, arms
round the other's shoulder, their underoos pulled down a
little too much in the back, as they groggily stood and
helped each other back, tripping a bit, to their room, and
drifted to one bed or the other. Though Mater and Pater
knew the boys were too old to sleep together, or bathe
together for that matter, still they hadn't the heart to make
a production of it, for they were such a comfort to the
other.

They had asked Dr. Gerber about the sleeping part (the
bathing part might be a sticky wicket for the parents to
admit to on behalf of their boys) and he concurred. So
what other sage did they need on that topic? They would
grow up to be good husbands and good fathers all their
days.

The boys fell, in their own beds, asleep almost
immediately they pulled the covers up to their necks in
their warm room of a womb. They had left the
Christopher Robin light on their desk on however. Not to
worry.

Their parents would come up the steps, a bit tipsy after
the party was over, go to the Terryberry boys' room,
tuck them in better, then turn out the light. Then to their
room, where they would lie with a wall of Jericho crease
between them and think about things that made them sleep
and sleep happily.

She, dreaming of Mal Mandrake and those elfin artistic
fingers that could do such things to  the willing raw clay
of herself.

He, of foreclosing on Dr. Gerber whose practice had
dropped drastically, what with all these TV psychologists
and self help books around. The pompous bastard was
trying to fake it, playing the ponies or something, maybe
blackmailing some patients; a psychiatrist has the greatest
blackmail field to choose from anyone Banker Terryberry
could think of.

It made him chuckle. Glad that neither he nor his wife had
ever availed themselves of the phony baloney doctor's
services, except for that one idle question about the boys
that Mr. Terryberry asked him.

Even the greatest of psychologists can't double talk his
way out of his banker knowing he is in the hole and will
never climb out of it. Closure this, you validated
sonofabitch, the banker thought.

And in the bedroom of boys, Ike dreamt of Zan. And Zan
dreamt of Ike. And in the morning they would wake up
and the windows would be frosty,  with the winter sun
shining in, or maybe snow might be showcased in their
windows when they opened the curtains, and they would
be together the whole livelong day and for the rest of their
lives to come.

So concludes my story of the Terryberries and the world
in which they live. I think this is the only good ending a
story like this can be expected to have. We thank you for
your time and patience. Now, let's turn out the lights and
let Zan and Ike get a good night's rest. They've things to
do on the morrow.

Hehehehehehehehe.
Timothy Stillman
comewinter@earthlink.net