Omniscient Side Bar
Many of you have asked about Audrey's mother, Tess, and how she became to rich, and how she came to live so isolated a life in the Old Castle, and how for that matter The Happy Tutor, the most disreputable of men, was ultimately hired as Audrey's Protector and Mentor. That seems to show very bad judgment on the mother's part. I can explain it all, but it is awkward.
In telling you the stories I will be sharing information that is strictly confidential, some of it disturbing, and some of it tragic. Much is a secret - a very dark secret - from Audrey herself. For me to publish it like this on the internet for all to see, and perhaps for Audrey to stumble upon is clearly reprehensible. Yet, unless you know the back story you will have no way of understanding how Audrey is the way she is, and how ugly the world is that she is destined to save. My only excuse is that I, as Omniscient Narrator, by long standing literary convention, am allowed to whisper to you, The Intended Reader, as my confidante, over the heads of the characters. You and I will know things that the characters do not. That is (I checked this with Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Senior Adjunct in Charge of Hidden Meanings in Wealth Bondage) called "dramatic irony." How Audrey rises or does not rise to the level of understanding you as Wise Reader and I as Omniscient Narrator share, will determine the Genre of our Tale. If Audrye's understanding rises to include and even transcend our understanding it will have, our story will, a triumphant ending, even if it ends in tragedy, all hopes dashed, all heroes dragged dead by their feet from the stage, while I alone remain to speak the disillusioned epilogue. If she does not rise to our shared understanding, then, well, at best we have farce, and at worst the ethos of dead winter, naturalism and blighting irony. So, you see, you need to know the disabling truth towards which dear Audrey sleepwalks the Castle, in search of the man will never find, not her Dad for Hire, the Happy Tutor, but Real Dad, her natural father. Mother never mentions father. And her body language says that question must never ever be raised. It makes me so sad. I wish I did not have to share this post. But it is what we writers call, "the donnee," the given. How it works out, beats me. I hope the next Omniscient Narrator they bring in will find a solution. I just know that Audrey must someday learn and transcend these bitter truth so she can save the world. It is for that Tutor will mentor her.
Warning
The Back Story below was written late at night on Prozac, professionally adjusted by a Qualified Physician. I also had chugged two or three beers (Malt Liquor), and had steeled my resolve, and dulled my despair, by reading more than twenty-five motivational quotations on Linked-In and Twitter. Unless your meds are dialed in just right, or you are well self-medicated, or have just read a good positive mental attitude book, or at least one Listicle on what Successful People Do in the Presence of Suffering Humanity, I would suggest you skip the rest of the next section, particularly the last paragraph, before I return with an Authorial Aside. Thank you.
Back Story on Tess
Tess was an only child who grew up on an Army base, or actually went from base to base, as her father, who eventually rose to Sergeant was redeployed. Her mother worked as a cashier in the commissary. Tess learned to make friends easily and give them up easily, as nothing ever lasts more than a year or two. As an only child she was considered strange, and in fact, as they said in those days, "retarded," meaning late to develop. When the other children her age were lisping, she was silent. When they could say "dada" or "momma," she had nothing to say. When they could speak in complete sentences, she was only humming. For her third birthday she was given a child's plastic clarinet, or horn, a "Melodica" with a few large, brightly colored keys. The first time she blew it made an off-key sound. The second time, a good note. The third time a perfect sound. And then sound after sound, until the house was full of music, tunes never played before. Only when her music was perfected to her own satisfaction, did she begin to use English. Her first words were a complete sentence, "Mother, where is father stationed this time and when do you expect him back?" For her fourth birthday, she was given a second-hand flute; and where other kids might carry a snuggy, she always carried her flute, and played to the trees, the flowers, the snows, pets, goldfish, all creatures great and small, who recognized in her tunes their own lost voice, or the timeless music of the spheres. The animals came at her call, and would sit crouched at her feet. The wind hummed back, and they would play a duet.
In first grade came ABCs and 1 + 1. But no sooner did she see math, than she was reminded of it. It was as if she was recalling what she had known in some other time and place. The school had a library, and the solitary child went down the math books, some on shelves so high she needed to borrow a chair, stand tippy-toe on the seat, and reach up, up. By fourth grade, she had remembered trigonometry, algebra, and calculus. In high school she was introduced to basic economics, and began to plunder the library again. It was all math, and math is all music. She heard math and heard economics as tunes, and could improvise with it, as if it were jazz. By college she was done with college, graduating Summa Cum Laude at 19 with a BA in Math, and minors in Music and Economics. By 20 she was the youngest person and only woman on the trading floor of a viciously competitive Wall Street firm, my current employer and generous patron, Wealth Bondage. Her trades resolved like tunes. She would hear the counter-party play a note, and she knew how it resolved. Her limit for trades rose win by win, until one day, without permission, she bet the company and brought down the Central Bank of Germany, as Soros had the Bank of England. At 20 she was richer than Koch or Gates.
Of course there was a dinner, for the top leadership of the firm, at a five star restaurant in NYC to celebrate the world historic trade. Tess, the solitary, had had no time to date, and no interest in drinking. Math was intoxicating enough. In her honor came three champagne toasts, one before each course. She felt compelled to drink each toast. She could remember, later, being bundled into a limo. Apparently there was an after party, for the rank and file traders, her peers, almost all young and male, on the trading floor, where she would awaken, next morning, in a fetal position, disheveled and half undressed as the sun rose over the Hudson, and blazed on her disgrace through the plate glass. She never went back. Not to the firm, or the city. She was ashamed, and even with family, would never speak of the event. So, now, wealthy, she lived in a hotel in Paris, then Brussels, then as the pregnancy ripened, she found the Old Castle, and purchased it for her confinement.
Authorial Aside
That is all I can bear to tell you. I may know more, but thank God, I have blanked it out. All I really know is second hand from the rumors outside the building, near our Dumpster, where the traders smoke, and brag. How much of what they boasted of is true, I will never know. You now know what I know. The rest will be easier, maybe. Except for how poor Audrey will ever learn the truth of her Real Dad. That is the state of the world she must save. Not a dream world. Our world. I am just happy to be back on the payroll.
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