“His singing?”
Maxim went about pulling out an old case from under the phonograph and clicked open the aged mechanism on it.
“Why, yes.It’s part of a well-rounded education.He didn’t enjoy it, which I believe is also part of getting educated.”Maxim looked up and into the middle distance, thinking.“Oh, wait.He learned to draw and paint as well.I instructed the staff at the old house to pack up everything, but it took us ages to move here, and I never got around to hanging his most mediocre pieces.”
Raven frowned.“Why would you want to hang his mediocre pieces?”
Maxim pursed his lips.“He wasn’t very good.I have a father’s loving eye, but even I will admit that he wasn’t very good.There were a few he worked on with much vigor though, and they just turned out so…mediocre.To tell you the truth, I should’ve realized it was because he had a crush on his art instructor.”Maxim sighed.“I failed him then.”
“Failed him how?”
Raven knew he was prying, but he was…maybe jealous of the relationship Heath and Maxim had, though jealous felt like a very narrow word to describe the oddly stinging emotion he was feeling.It was simply something Raven had longed for—a parent in his life who really was and acted like a parent, not like someone who wanted to own his mind and thoughts, and his body on top of all that too.My mom just wants me to think and act like her, and I’m a failure as long as I don’t.Now that I’m…what I am, I’m a failure one way or the other.
Maxim clicked his tongue.“Oh.You mustn’t tell him I told you, but I took it upon myself, as any parent should, to explain to him about intimacy when he was the proper age.I gave detailed explanations of the heterosexual variety, which may in part explain why he was always somewhat embarrassed talking about his actual preferences with me later.I should’ve explained much more broadly, even then.”
Raven thought this over.And over.Does that mean Maxim’s experience is more broad?When he kicked me out of his bed… I shouldn’t have done that.I shouldn’t have snuck into his room in the middle of the night to…offer myself.I shouldn’t be thinking about what type of people he likes or doesn’t like.
Increasingly nervous, Raven searched his mind for what to say in response.He came up with “My mom took me to a rally for marriage monopoly when I was a kid,” which he realized was quite offensive only after he’d said it.
Maxim gave him a flat look.“Oh.”
Raven looked away.“I didn’t want to—I mean, I didn’t understand.It makes no sense, right?Why should only some people be allowed to marry?It’s illogical.”
And only a man and a woman, at that.Something inside of Raven had always railed against the thought, not even because he’d known what he liked—who he liked—but because it made people into breeding pairs above anything else.He’d realized that only later though, and the understanding had been freeing.
“It is.Oh!This is it.”
Maxim lifted a cylinder out of the case and pushed the tarp back farther.As he did so, Raven saw the beginnings of more.At his feet, Umeboshi sneezed when the dust hit his nose.
“Is this all—so you lived in London before you moved here?”
Maxim nodded while he did things to the phonograph, cranking a lever and fitting the cylinder into the machine.Raven watched with bewildered fascination.
“We didn’t move to this house, as it hadn’t been built yet.That happened later.It was a much smaller place at first, close to the Forum.There was a very large fae contingent here in the city, and they’d been quick to purchase property for the Forum.There we go, let’s listen.”
The first thing Raven heard over the trumpet-shaped speaker of the phonograph was static, then some clicking, then…Maxim’s voice, distorted by time and frail technology.
“Here we go, darling.We’re all set up.Now, just like you practiced.”
“Do I have to, Papa?You’re going to play it to other people.”
Heath’s voice was that of a child in the recording, maybe a teen.Raven couldn’t imagine it, and he was not so much startled by the youthfulness of the voice but by both voices’ accents.They sounded entirely the kind of British you’d get in old historical movies—stiff, tight.
“Whoa.”
“Heath, darling, you have sung to bring others joy before, and you have been working so diligently.Will you not do your papa a favor, please?I might even get the cook to make you extra rice pudding for supper.”
Maxim, in the here and now, smiled serenely.“He did love rice pudding with compote.”
“I’ll have only rice pudding, and no more parsnips.For a week!”
“Oh, darling, a week is such a long time.Maybe—”
“For a week, Papa!I’m not singing for anything less than a week of rice pudding.”
Maxim chuckled nervously.“This sounds terrible, but he wasn’t actually that spoiled.”
“All right, darling.One week of rice pudding it is,”said Maxim on the recording.
