The Ryman LegacyChapter 7A

By Mzyra

New Year

Calvin

Mia

Sean

That day, like most days recently in the Ryman household, was a birthday as Nicola and Alvin’s eldest child Calvin became a kid.

Sean and several of the Jayapalans had come for the party as Grandma Carla brought Calvin to the cake.

“Wow. These toddler parties are dead exciting, aren’t they Marina?”

“Oh shush Sean. At least they’re cute. And a break from my own kids for a little while…”

“Two children is definitely the way to go sis.”

“Well it’s no good being told that now, is it?!”

Calvin looked much the same as a child as he had as a toddler – pretty much an identical, though smaller, version of his father. Besides eye colour, people probably never would have guessed that he was in any way related to his grandfather, but Birch was proud of his grandkids anyway.

And at least Calvin had picked a fairly good outfit to grow into.

Calvin, being as lovely and friendly as he is, leeched on to the only other child at his party – his cousin Cindy (Marina’s fourth child).

Marina was just happy to see her kids able to make friends; most of them tended to drive people away before they could make any friends.

“Aw, I miss when my daughters were this small and adorable…”

Sean found himself getting paternal again; his daughters were older than Calvin and were not far from being teenagers, but it hadn’t seemed long ago since they’d been as small as Mia was now.

Cindy’s difficulty in being nice to people had apparently been overwhelmed by Calvin’s inability not to be nice to people and they were quickly good friends, though you might never have guessed that they were related at all.

Meanwhile the party had been found to be a lot more exciting in the greenhouse/wedding house/party room with the stereo and disco lights – anything less and Sara definitely would have left ten minutes in, never mind actually hanging out with her mother.

Marina liked to think she was cool – Sara liked to roll her eyes and pretend they weren’t related (though the genetics were obvious).

Of course, with the stereo on, Demi Love showed up promptly at 11pm (probably hiding in the car around the corner, watching the time tick down) to tell them all to go home (and did so on all subsequent parties, even if it isn’t shown) – luckily everyone had had a good enough time by this point not to mind.

Having made friends with one cousin, Calvin’s grandparents helped him make friends with others by inviting them over in groups, so he spent one Sunday making friends with Sean’s daughters May and Tiana. Of course, Calvin was younger than them and more than a little gullible.

“Oh yeah, our Daddy bought us an elephant. And our Mum bought us a llama. We get stuff like that because we’re really rich and our parents are like great at everything.”

“Oh… My parents got me a little sister, though she doesn’t do much yet. Can I come over and see your animals some time?”

“Ah, we would, but animals don’t really like meeting new people, makes them nervous, you know. But maybe one day we might organise something…”

As for Mia, it was her birthday that very night, so Birch took the time to appreciate her being so small. He was into his seventies by this point and wasn’t sure just how many more grandkids he’d get to see, so he’d have to enjoy what he could. And hope that he went before Carla did.

Even more Jayapalans showed up for this party, having convinced Seth that kids’ parties could actually be quite fun.

Of course, they seemed to get along well at first glance…

“Hey Sara, how’d you like a backrub?”

“Well… okay, I guess… What are you after, Seth?”

“Do I have to be after something to give my sister a backrub?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Well, since you mentioned it, I was just wondering whether maybe you might give me your friend Katy’s mobile number…”

Sara – having trained for years to be a ballerina before switching to politics – nimbly turned and grabbed her younger brother into a headlock.

“Aww, has little Sethy got a crush on my friend Katy?”

“No! I just heard she was easy-”

“Are you slagging off my friend?! I’ll tell her you said that!”

“What?! I-! No-! Just get off me, will you?!”

“Haha! No!”

Sibling fight eventually broken off, Mia was brought to her birthday cake and everyone was curious to find our whether she’d resemble her moth anymore than her elder brother had.

Carla got into the partying swing of things a lot more than the others, being allowed to be an eccentric old grandma by this point.

And it turned out that Mia looked almost exactly as her brother had done, except for having dark blue eyes rather than light blue and having an ever so slightly darker skin tone, meaning that she too looked just like Alvin. She was sweet, however, so any disappointment that might have been felt about the lack of Ryman genetics was quickly released due to her adorableness.

As for the Jayapalans, despite the headlock and sibling fights, no grudges were held and by the end of the party Sara and Seth were maliciously gossiping about their uncle Alvin burning the spaghetti one time. In fact, fights were frequent at their house, but since both were equally ‘nice’ they fully understood the mean compulsion and let go of any grudges, knowing that pretty soon they’d have the other in a headlock for some reason or other (or no reason at all). It was an odd peace, but peace nonetheless.

It shouldn’t have been the kind of place for Calvin at all, but two of the five Jayapalan kids were fairly nice, so he managed to enjoy any times he was invited over and had water balloon fights in the backyard. Which also meant he became friends with Cindy’s twin Haley and their older brother Brendan pretty quickly too.

But when Calvin wasn’t over at any of his cousins’ he felt kind of lonely, up in his watchtower. He loved his family, but his grandparents were really old and couldn’t do much, his parents were busy and not much fun anyway and Mia was too small to do the kind of stuff he wanted to.

But he tried to have fun with her anyway. She was a cute and sweet little sister and adored her big brother and his funny games, making them as good friends as child and a toddler could be.

Calvin just had to hope that school would mean less loneliness since there were so many other kids there. Maybe too many other kids for his shy nature, but at least he was going with several friends made already who he could hang out with if nobody else talked to him.

The social situation at school was found to be tolerable, but the amount and quantity of work after the freedom of toddlerhood and Christmas was less so.

“Do I have to do this, Grandpa?”

“School work’s very important, Calvin.”

“Why? Did you do a lot?”

“Well, um, not exactly, but…”

“You still became a celebrity chef, didn’t you? And went to university.”

“… You want your teachers to like you, don’t you? Well they’ll like you a lot more if you do what they say. And what they say is homework!”

Calvin’s reluctant work paid off in the end as he came home with an A+ grade one day, and went to go and show and celebrate with his parents.*

*Luckily arriving just late enough not to be scarred for the rest of his life…

Alvin wasn’t just involved in his work and with his wife, however, and set to work teaching Mia how to walk. Being as abnormally active as the majority of the rest of her family, Mia picked it up with great speed, allowing Alvin to get back to his studying with little time lost.

Meanwhile Nicola was feeling ill – hopefully with a good consequence rather than just catching a bug Calvin had brought home from school…

She started teaching Mia how to talk all the same, though this process took a lot longer than teaching her to walk since Mia was almost as shy as she was active, but eventually she began saying intelligible words, the first of which was teddy. Nicola began to wonder whether they should have bought that teddy bear for Christmas, but there would be plenty more children to be the first word of…

And it turned out that those children would be coming quite soon, too…

With Nicola increasingly resting and taking it easy and Calvin at school, there were many hours during the day where Alvin and Mia just skilled in the living room in relative silence, which counted as the perfect family time for Alvin.

Elsewhere, at the plot Fagin’s Youth Club for Guys…

Sean was recalling why he hadn’t gone into politics or business; he wasn’t great at speeches. When you were a criminal people weren’t listening all that much to what you were saying as what you were doing with their loved ones or whatever else your plans involved.

Luckily none of the teenage boys were paying much attention to what he was saying, busy drinking from the bar (which they believed had alcohol in it, but secretly didn’t, so it was quite amusing watching them acting increasingly drunk for absolutely no reason).

The youth clubs weren’t being all that successful if Sean and Opal were honest. They’d probably have had greater numbers if they integrated the boys and girls, but that could lead to issues that they didn’t want to deal with. And the kids turning up then – or even now – didn’t seem that interested in a future of crime so much as looking cool, being rebellious and meeting other people their age.

Sean decided to head over to the one boy he actually knew of the group – his nephew Seth. Seth could have been a perfect mafia boss, given the training and time to mature, but somehow he’d decided to be a celebrity chef instead, which to Sean was a waste of perfectly good talent.

“How’s it going Seth?”

“I know you’ve made an effort uncle Sean, but it’s pretty lame here. And I don’t care what the other guys are saying, there is no alcohol in that bar. I should know… And you’re letting just about anybody in! If they’re not wusses like that Jesse guy, they’re gits like that Chem person. Chip’s okay, but he’s not about to threaten to beat people up. As I said: lame.”

Of course Seth was biased. He and Chem had taken a disliking to each other the moment they’d met. And the other two seemed to be fairly good kids (which annoyed Seth). Sure, they weren’t about to be Criminal Masterminds, but at the least Sean could try to sway them from deciding to be Captain Heroes, or monitor them and their progress if that was what they chose.

The only way Sean had found to stop Seth fighting everyone (for being ‘wusses’ or just for being Chem) was to get them out on the basketball court, which was also the only way to get them to build any potentially useful skills.

But Seth had left one person out of his evaluation of the youth club - though that was probably due to how quiet he was - Tom. Doubtlessly Seth wouldn’t have thought much of him either, but Sean was impressed, if reluctant. Tom never drank from the bar, played darts, watched TV or got into fights, just always seemed to be skilling in some way or another – working out, lying, mechanical skill… They were all the skills that could be needed to be the next Criminal Mastermind and he certainly seemed to be dedicated, but… he seemed unhappy.

Sean needed to find out more about this kid.

“So – Tom, isn’t it? – you’ve been doing a lot of skilling around here. Mechanical, creativity, body – an interesting and unusual combination there… What exactly is it that you want to be?”

Tom looked at him uneasily. “I’m guessing from the lie detector you have that you’re a criminal recruiting early, so I’m sorry to disappoint you, but… I’m not really skilling for a career, though it might be useful later too.”

Sean was knocked back a bit by how easily the kid had seen through him, but Tom had still come and talked to him, so all was not lost and he was very curious.

“So why else might you need to work out and learn to lie convincingly and work with mechanisms? Why not hang out and have fun? Or stay at home?”

Tom sat down despondently. “Home isn’t a great place. And there’s something I have to do which the skills could help with… But I’m procrastinating really, I know it.”

“If you’re procrastinating from something it probably means you don’t want to do it, are you su-”

“No. I do want to do it. I have to. But… Well it must be easy being a criminal if you had a bad upbringing and stuff, and mine wasn’t the best, but there was somebody… And I know he’d object to what I want to do and I can’t stop hearing his voice in my mind, telling me not to. You probably don’t understand-”

“Hey - I may be a criminal, but that doesn’t mean I had a bad upbringing and nobody loved me or whatever! I happened to have two very nice – if inattentive – parents, a caring elder sister and two sweet younger siblings. I did have a bitch of a twin sister too, but that doesn’t destroy a whole life.”

“But if they were good and moral people and you loved them… How do you ignore what you know they would be saying or thinking at what you’re planning to do?”

Sean sat in silence for a little while, pondering how he did manage to ignore the traditional morals he’d been brought up with, while they watched some of the other normal boys hanging out, having the normal conversations about sports, TV and girls.

And on the other side of the room Seth beat Chem in a physical fight, while everyone just left them to it, having given up on enforcing peace between them.

Turning back to Tom, Sean was careful with his words as he tried to sort his thoughts. “It kind of depends what you want to do. I balance out the bad stuff I do with some good stuff, you know, if I steal a lot of money I give some to charity and things. Like Robin Hood kind of. But I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you mean…”

“I’m getting revenge.

“I have to get revenge. Some people killed one of my family having made his life hell for years. The family member was so nice that he wouldn’t want me to, but…”

“Yeah, I see what you mean… Look, if I were you… Think about the worst case scenario about what could happen if you don’t get revenge. What if they go after another family member? What if you have a family of your own one day and they go after your spouse or kids? The thought of anyone going after any member of my family is enough to motivate me to do almost anything.”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t know the full facts, but in anything like this… Be careful and know what you’re doing before you try so things don’t go wrong. And if you need any more advice, someone to talk to, or to discuss your plans with, I’ll be around. Sean Raymond, happy to-”

Tom started slightly “Sean what?”

“Um, Raymond…?”

“Oh,” Tom looked disappointed “Sorry, I misheard you, thought you said something else.”

“No problem. I better go break Seth and Chem up again before their parents start asking how they got so badly beaten up…”

Worst case scenario. Tom’s parents may not hurt him physically or purposely emotionally, but if he ever tried to leave, or got married and had kids… His mother would be intensely jealous of any wife he took unless he married somebody like her. It was a bleak future and one that Terry never considered. And it was enough.

~~~ End of 7A ~~~