Let All Our Tomorrows Begin
Author's note: Clay owns himself and his own name. I only wrote the words
to the story.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The flight back to Los Angeles
Clay winced at the sounds floating from the bathroom of the plane, thankful
that he had thought to charter this small flight for them to go from
The lone attendant brought back a wet washcloth to Clay with a smile. Clay nodded and returned a grateful smile of his own to her. "Thank you."
"Any way I can help out, Mr. Aiken."
He sighed as she walked away. Mr. Aiken... I get that a lot these days. Wonder if it's because I'm growing older or because I'm married and expecting my first child. Clay glanced up as the bathroom door opened and Kate emerged from the tiny room every bit as pale as she went in. He beckoned to her. "Come here, honey." She obeyed weakly, plopping down in the empty seat beside him. Very gently he mopped her face with the cloth before refolding it and laying it across her forehead.
"I'm sorry I'm such a pain about this."
"You're not a pain, honey," Clay chided lightly, pulling her into his tender embrace. "You're a little more maintenance right now, but it's nothing you can control. You didn't say to God, 'I'd like one pregnancy with a side of morning sickness, easy on the swelling.'"
Smiling wanly, Kate chuckled at Clay's wry humor. "No, I most certainly did not. Especially since neither one of us were planning for it to happen when and how it did. Thank you for the dose of humor along with the TLC." She sighed. "Hopefully I'll be feeling well enough tonight for some 'us' time."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," Clay responded. "Kate honey, I appreciate Sarah's advice and how you've pursued it with my needs at the heart of your actions. But I still don't want to give this to you or Joseph, and no amount of good intentions will prevent that if I'm still contagious."
"You're contagious as long as they find traces of the bacteria in your system," Kate told him. "I did some research one night at Kim's when I couldn't sleep. They'll be taking blood and stool samples from you until they're convinced that you don't have it any more."
Clay scowled. "Lovely."
"You'll notice I didn't laugh this time."
"Thank you," Clay sighed.
"I must have read a dozen different web sites from Center for Disease Control to WebMD and World Health Organization on down." Kate shook her head. "Not a single one led me to believe that you could pass in on through a kiss or other intimate contact, Love. Not a one. Call Doctor Gates or any other doctor you want to for a second opinion, but I think Doctor Kelley just might have overreacted as a general precaution for Joseph's sake."
"So if I'm going to pass this on to you," Clay summarized, "it will be because of something we ate or drank rather than something we might do later that night?" When Kate nodded, he scowled again. "In other words, we went through several days of separation for nothing."
"I wouldn't call it nothing, honey," Kate soothed. "We've exchanged some very beautiful letters, and we've come to appreciate our relationship all the more because of the time we had to spend apart." She shrugged. "And if we should have to be apart for a longer period of time, we started to figure out some of what we need to do in order to keep our lines of communication strong."
Clay took Kate's hand in his and snuggled closer to her. "So far we haven't had to be apart that long. Long enough to keep us from driving each other crazy, but not so long that we couldn't survive it."
"So what's the verdict," Kate asked gingerly, knowing that Jerome just might be within earshot, "about you and I... the intimacy issue."
Clay moaned lightly, and Kate knew that it was an issue that was tempting
him sorely. "I know we haven't been together that way since that Friday
night in
"Aw, but I want to sway the vote," Kate pouted. "You sway so nicely."
He snickered. "Twist my words, why don't you?"
"Oh, but it's fun."
Placing his face right next to her head, he sighed. "I want to wait to think about that until I know I will be objective about the whole thing. If I tried thinking about that now, I know what my vote would be." He closed his eyes and smiled. "I don't want to think about anything right now but the feel of having you in my arms and the smell of your hair."
Kate giggled as she heard him inhale deeply. "Clayton, I don't do anything weird or different to my hair. It's just ordinary shampoo and conditioner."
"Maybe that's one reason I like it," Clay confessed. "No pretenses. You are who you are, and you don't ever apologize for that."
"One more reason I love you so much," Kate answered. "We can be completely ourselves with each other knowing the other person will accept us as we are."
Clay chuckled. "And our 'as we are' fits together perfectly."
"Maybe not perfectly," Kate mused with deep thought. Noticing Clay's wary eyebrow she clarified. "One word: barbecue."
"Okay, not perfectly." Clay kissed her ear. "Just most of the important things fit together."
"If nothing else, we fit in each other's arms nicely."
The two continued to cuddle and converse lightly until the plane landed in
"I told you Christmas is big at our house."
Clay stared at the container full of Christmas greenery and things - mostly
miniature trees, which had obviously been perfect for Kate and Sarah's tiny
"All of it?" Kate asked weakly.
Instantly Clay remembered the words of several people in Kate's family - Sally, Patricia, even Kate herself. Christmas is a pretty big celebration in this family. Clay rolled his eyes. They hadn't been joking, and the proof was in these storage containers. "You could almost decorate our whole house for Christmas just with what you have here," Clay told her smartly.
"Not quite," Kate admitted. "But I sure could make a nice dent in the decorating."
I don't doubt that. Still curious, this time to see her taste in ornaments, Clay opened the second box of Christmas decorations.
"In the mood for a little Christmas in July, I take it?" Kate smirked.
"Something like that." It didn't take Clay long to determine that Kate had several running themes in her ornaments, and could have decorated each of her miniature trees with one particular theme. Somehow Clay suspected that was exactly what she did with them. "You have quite an eclectic collection of Christmas ornaments here, honey."
Kate nodded. "I've seen people who are able to do their entire house in one theme or another, but while that's neat in its own way I think that's almost overdoing it."
Clay gave her a sideways glance. "This from the woman with a 35,000 baby name book."
She made a face at him. "You're never gonna let me live that one down, are you?"
"Nuh-unh."
Kate crossed her arms in front of her. "Then how come we still haven't come up with our son's middle name, hunh?"
"Too many to sort through," Clay teased.
"Should have seen that one coming," Kate drawled, thoughtfully smacking her lips.
"I really don't think it will take that long to come up with a middle name for our son. I don't think it will be that hard to come up with a name for our daughter, if we have one."
Kate agreed. "It probably won't take long at all."
"If we weren't planning on naming our son Joseph," Clay began, "we could name our daughter Josephine. It means, 'God will increase.'" He waited until Kate nodded thoughtfully before delivering the punch line with an impish twinkle in his green eyes. "And we could call her Fifi for short."
The expression on Kate's face instantly went from thoughtful appreciation to one of mild indignation. "No. Just - no. I am not naming my daughter after a poodle."
Clay laughed warmly at her sudden reversal. "I take it that means you don't want to name her Josephine," he chuckled.
Kate vigorously shook her head. "Not if people are going to be calling her Fifi."
"Aww..."
"Fine, Clayton Aiken," Kate growled mildly. "If you really want to traumatize our child for life, go right on ahead. Then you can pay for all those therapy sessions for her to complain to some overpriced shrink about her twisted father naming her Fifi."
"All right, all right," Clay giggled. "You don't have to take my name in vain, honey. I was just teasing you."
"Good."
Clay pulled out a few ornaments to study closer. "Are there any of these that have special meanings to you, honey?"
"I'd have to go through them to remember," Kate told him. "Why?"
He shrugged lightly. "I guess I'm thinking about Christmas traditions. Both the Kirche side and the Parker side have their own traditions... and I'm wondering what some of our traditions are going to be."
Kate smiled and walked over to wrap her arms around Clay's waist. "Looks like we get to create them the way we want them, don't we?"
Placing his hand over the top of Kate's, Clay beamed warmly at both her affection and the idea she had suggested. Clay was very excited at the idea of creating their own traditions. Traditions for the Clay and Kate Aiken family. "Yes," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion as he laced his fingers through Kate's and pulled her ever closer to himself.
As she quickly found her cheek pressed up against his back, Kate closed her eyes with a contented sigh. She wanted to memorize this moment, knowing that it was a gift from God and would never come again. Gently she placed a kiss on his back between his shoulder blades.
A shiver ran through Clay as they continued to hold each other close. "Better not do too much of that," he warned with his voice low and rich. "We still haven't come to a decision on that issue, and I don't want to do something both of us will regret just in case we find out that Sarah's wrong."
Kate whimpered lightly as she gave Clay's waist a squeeze. "All right..." Keeping him close, she opened her eyes again. "What are some of the Christmas traditions from our families that you'd like to see us use in ours?"
Clay knew the first thing he wanted to make an Aiken family Christmas tradition. "I liked reading The Gospel of Luke on Christmas Eve," he stated. "I want to keep that one for sure."
"We agree completely on that one."
He gingerly lifted the lid of the greenery container again. "Do you have mistletoe? That's definitely a tradition I want to keep."
Kate snickered. "I do have a sprig or two in there, but I can always get more."
Clay glanced at Kate. "Do you have a preference between real or artificial trees?"
"That one doesn't matter one way or the other to me," Kate told
him. "If we have a real one, we'll just have to make sure that
Laughing warmly, Clay shook his head. "But if she drank out of the tree stand, she'd have nice, fresh pine-scented breath."
"Oo, a doggy breath mint..." Kate drawled dryly.
The couple continued to discuss Christmas traditions even as they left the containers of decorations and entered the study to do a little online research. Clay turned his computer on, and brought over a second chair for Kate as it booted up the operating system. By the time both of them were seated in front of the computer, it was ready for action. Clay opened up a browser window and began his search for information.
An hour and approximately two dozen web sites later, Clay bit his lip thoughtfully as he studied the open window on his computer screen. In that entire time, he hadn't found a single thing that indicated typhoid could be passed on through so much as a kiss let alone any more than that. Most of what he read verified what Kate had said, that it was passed on through food and water because of poor sanitation. They didn't have that problem here. "Well honey... it looks like the only time I would pass this on to you is sometime at the dinner table, and you've seen to what it takes for everything to be safe there." He glanced up at his wife with a wry smile. "I'd say that we've got this bug contained."
"I still want to be cautious," Kate insisted, "but all the known ways that this gets passed on are taken into consideration." She shrugged. "It's your call, Love. Whatever you think... I will bide by that."
Clay studied her resigned expression for a moment before making his final decision. Scooting his chair closer to hers, he reached up with one hand to caress her cheek. "I think we've been apart long enough," he told her gently before leaning in to kiss her.
Closing her eyes, Kate submerged herself in the myriad of sensations rushing over and through her. She had missed this, and judging by the depth of feeling he was putting into it, so had Clay.
All at once he broke the kiss, and turned to his computer. Quickly he closed the computer, knowing it would go into standby mode shortly after they had left the room. Clay stood, reaching out his hand to Kate. He smiled ever so slightly at noting the look in her eye that told him she knew exactly what was on his mind. Kate took his hand and stood with his assistance, letting go as he moved to pick her up in his arms. As she wrapped her arms around his neck, Clay began the walk to their room. "I wish I wasn't on a singing restriction right now," Clay complained, "because I know exactly what I would sing to you."
Kate blinked at him curiously. "What would you sing?"
"Touch," he informed her, "but not as a fast song." Seeing the puzzled look on her face, he explained. "I had the idea the other day that in the proper context, it would work as a slow song for a couple to sing to each other." When the puzzled look didn't go away, Clay sang just a few short bars for her to give her an example of what he meant.
Finally Kate understood and placed a hand over his mouth. "I like it. But let's save it until we know what's wrong with your voice and whether it's going to heal or not."
"It may not heal..." he warned.
Kate shook her head gently. "That won't change who you are."
Clay arrived at their room, shutting the door behind them. "I love you, Kathryn."
"I love you, Clayton."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Aiken residence
"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"
Clay smiled lovingly at his wife and shook his head. "I need to do this alone, honey. But I want you to know that I appreciate your offer."
Kate frowned lightly, the concern creasing her forehead. "All right, Clayton. I will trust you to know the best course of action. Know that you have my love and support too, in whatever comes out of this."
"Thank you," Clay told her, bending down slightly to place a gentle kiss on her lips. On the surface it appeared that he was reassuring her that everything would be okay, but Clay knew in his heart that it was the other way around. This day he was gleaning what he needed to get through this experience from Kate and from God alone. Then again, Clay considered Kate to be a gift from God in the first place. He pulled her into a tight embrace, holding her close.
When Clay hadn't let go after several minutes, Kate reached her hand up and into his hair. "I'll be praying for you, sweetheart. Whatever God would have happen, it is as He has ordained in advance, and we'll be needing whatever grace He has to offer us."
"I know," Clay breathed. "But that doesn't stop me from being a bit frightened."
Kate smiled at him as he pulled back to look at her with his vulnerable green eyes. She reached up to caress his cheek. "The unknown can be a frightening thing. I'll be praying for your encouragement and peace. Will that help?"
Clay nodded. "Just knowing that you are praying for me will do wonders."
"So's your mother, and both of my parents, and several of our closest friends." Kate shot him a gently stern gaze. "Make sure to pray for yourself too, okay?"
As usual Kate was right, and as usual she knew him entirely too well. He would probably spend much of the time waiting for the doctor in prayer. "Of course." Planting one more kiss on her lips, Clay walked outside of their home and joined Jerome in the SUV. He stifled a nervous inhalation as Jerome pulled out of the driveway.
The bodyguard glanced at his companion. "You going to be okay?"
Smiling at Jerome's concern, Clay nodded. "Yeah." I'll be
better when this is over with, but...
In about thirty minutes the two arrived at the office of the otolaryngologist, Doctor Max Roberts. Knowing that it was not a good idea to leave them in the waiting room, a nurse whisked them back to an examining room where Clay would wait for Doctor Roberts there. Standing guard outside, Jerome pulled the door closed behind him and left Clay alone in the tiny room.
Clay fidgeted nervously as he sat down to wait. It wasn't only because he needed to do this alone that Clay made the decision to come to this appointment solo. Not knowing what awaited him, he took Kate's squeamish nature into consideration when he weighed his options. The last thing he wanted for his expectant wife was for any of these mystery procedures to prompt a speedy trip to the bathroom to get sick. So this morning he left her at home on prayer warrior watch while he came alone. Since he was still quite nervous, Clay bowed his head to spend the next little while talking with God.
At last the nurse re-entered the room, interrupting his prayer time. "Come with me, Mr. Aiken. We want to give you a baseline hearing test first." She led Clay to a room where she told him that they would be playing a series of tones, and that he was supposed to raise his hand when he heard them. She left the glass room to enter the control booth, leaving Clay simply to listen. Sometimes he heard high tones, sometimes he heard low tones or medium tones, sometimes he heard what amounted to little more than static. Clay did as he was instructed, letting her know any time he heard a noise that wasn't the beat of his own heart. Once that test was finished, the nurse took him to back to the examining room while Jerome once again stood watch outside. Reassured by the familiar test, Clay returned to praying, asking God for peace and that His will be done in their lives with whatever challenges God might want to give them.
Shortly after Clay finished, a medium-sized blonde-haired man entered the
room. "Good day, Mr. Aiken. I'm Doctor Roberts. What seems to be the
trouble?" Clay gave him the background story about his vocal troubles,
beginning with
The doctor then began to examine Clay, but much to Clay's surprise began by
investigating his nose. Clay blinked with confusion as the doctor stretched his
nostrils and examined them for who knows what. And just what does my nose
have to do with what's going on with my throat? Clay wondered. After his
nose had been thoroughly stretched and checked, Clay's face worked feverishly
to recover as Doctor Roberts took notes. Is this part of the usual
procedure, Lord, or do I just have a doctor with a really strange sense of
humor?
Barely giving Clay time to think about what just happened, the doctor came at him again. Only this time, Doctor Roberts went for Clay's ears. He placed an ear thermometer cone inside the canal and looked inside with a light in his hand. "Ah yes. It appears you have a little bit of buildup in here. Do you wear earphones often?"
"I wear earpieces to monitor the audio for my concerts," Clay explained, still puzzled by the doctor's choice of parts to examine. "They fit inside my ears."
"That certainly explains the buildup. We'll just take care of that for you right now." Doctor Roberts grabbed a tiny pair of tweezers, and using the cone to protect Clay's ear canal, he removed the wax buildup in both ears. Yeowch, Clay winced as the first piece of wax was extracted. I think I have a sadist for a doctor. As Doctor Roberts disposed of the wax, Clay rubbed both ears and wondered what torture he would live through next.
Doctor Roberts turned back to him with a tongue depressor. Clay heaved a light sigh of relief at seeing an artifact whose purpose and procedure he recognized. As ordered, Clay held his mouth open while Doctor Roberts peered towards the back of his throat. Doctor Roberts threw the used tongue depressor into the trash, and Clay glanced up at him. "What's the verdict?"
"Oh, I'm not done." Doctor Roberts picked up a nasal spray bottle. "We're going to novocaine one of your nostrils so I can run a length of fiberoptic tubing with a camera attached through your nose to see your throat better."
Clay blinked with obvious confusion at the suggestion. If this had been his plan all along, it would certainly explain his bizarre interest with Clay's nose. But he had to ask anyway. "Wouldn't it be easier to stick the camera in through the mouth?"
Doctor Roberts laughed. "This is standard procedure, Mr. Aiken. As long as you don't swallow and bang the fiberoptic tubing into your throat, you won't feel a thing."
Grumbling under his breath about where else the doctor could stick the
camera, Clay allowed him to spray the novocaine into one of his nostrils. Once
the nose was sufficiently numb, Clay held still as the doctor ran the
ultra-thin fiberoptic cable into his nose and down his throat. Now I know
why I told Kate to stay home. She would either have laughed or gotten sick at
this.
Just as Clay was starting to wonder if the doctor was checking the entire length of his throat, Doctor Roberts made a few noises of affirmation. "There's definitely been some vocal abuse, Mr. Aiken. I've seen enough to know we want to videotape your vocal cords."
Oh really? Clay grumbled again. It would have made a lot more sense to videotape the cords in the first place and leave this step out. Of course since he wasn't supposed to swallow let alone talk, he kept silent while the doctor removed the cable. Once the fiberoptic cable was no longer inside of Clay, Clay eyed the doctor again. "If you're just going to videotape my throat anyway, why didn't we just skip this step?" he asked, trying very hard to remain patient.
"Standard procedure," Doctor Roberts repeated.
That explanation didn't satisfy Clay at all. He frowned. "Maybe you should make the other thing 'standard procedure' and forget stuffing that tube down people's noses."
Doctor Roberts sighed. "It's cost-prohibitive to do that, Mr. Aiken. We use the less expensive procedure to determine if there's anything in the throat to warrant the more expensive one."
"How can it be more expensive to run a camera in someone's mouth than it would be to shove that little tube down their nose or some other orifice?" Clay asked, his irritation growing by the minute. "That doesn't make any sense to me."
"In the interest of billable hours, Mr. Aiken," the doctor answered, "I'm going to defer that question to the billing department. You will see the answer for yourself at a later date. Make sure to remember the name 'transnasal fiberoptic laryngoscopy'. That was the procedure you just went through."
Clay made a face. He knew when he was being stonewalled. Rather than waste any more of his own valuable time, he changed the subject slightly. "Let's just get on with it then. You said something about videotaping my vocal cords."
Doctor Roberts nodded. "I want to watch them as they produce various vocal sounds. This way we know how you are vocalizing, and what habits will need to be changed for the sake of your vocal health."
Finally, Clay sighed, a procedure that makes sense. Clay followed the nurse down the hall to the room where the video equipment for the procedure was housed. Shortly the doctor's personnel had the video equipment set up, and the doctor arrived to monitor the proceedings. Clay pronounced the range of vowels with the ultra-thin lens of the video camera capturing the action going on just past his teeth. The doctor nodded thoughtfully throughout the procedure until its end.
Doctor Roberts showed Clay certain clips of the fresh video, pointing to key areas of his vocal cords. "It's as we feared, Mr. Aiken. You have vocal nodules on your cords."
Clay closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. This can't be right... I
can't have vocal nodules. God is the one who led me down this path - why would
He allow me to have vocal nodes?
Waiting until Clay reopened his eyes, Doctor Roberts continued. "There is good news, however. For one thing, I only see a pair of them. For another, they are still small, and I have every reason to believe very soft. This tells me that you haven't had them long." Doctor Roberts smiled and made a note on Clay's chart. "If I were you, I would make sure to thank two individuals. The first one is God, and the second one is your wife. Your run-in with typhoid fever was a blessing in disguise, Mr. Aiken. God was looking out for your vocal health by giving you that, because it made you step back and take a break at the time you needed it. I doubt you would have unless you were under doctor's orders. You and your wife may have had your lives inconvenienced for a little while by the typhoid, but by having to deal with that we were able to catch the nodes early before they became bigger and harder. And your wife did you a huge favor by taking your symptoms seriously and getting you an appointment in the first place."
Slowly Clay nodded. He needed to think of some very special way to thank Kate for being his other greatest supporter. His head still swam with the news that he had received, but Clay knew that he had to take responsibility for it and act accordingly. Kate and his children's future would depend on how he handled himself from this moment forward. "Now that we know what's wrong with my voice, what's the next step? What do I do from here?"
Doctor Roberts smiled at Clay's willingness to change what was needed for his vocal health to improve. "I will only recommend surgery if the nodes turn cancerous or if my other suggestion doesn't work for you."
"What's that other suggestion?" Clay asked.
"Vocal therapy," Doctor Roberts told him. "The speech and singing therapist would have to work with you to know for sure, but I am speculating that you would need to be taught better breathing techniques, better singing techniques, and possibly even better speaking techniques. It would surprise many people how much damage can be done to their voice by, say, not putting enough air into their attempts at speaking. Or by speaking too loud, or by speaking outside of their natural register."
"Got it," Clay nodded. "Do you have a reputable therapist that I can start working with?"
"Of course, Mr. Aiken." Doctor Roberts obtained the information through one of his nurses and handed it to Clay along with the rest of his paperwork. "I will let you make your own appointment, Mr. Aiken, since you know your schedule. Make sure he gives me a call so that I can give him access to the video of your laryngoscopy."
Clay nodded numbly. "Thank you," he responded, still in shock at the diagnosis. Doctor Roberts exited the examining room, leaving Clay alone with his thoughts and emotions. Suddenly very unsure, Clay let his head fall into his hands. Vocal nodes... how can this be happening? What am I going to tell Kate? Breathing in and out several times, he conversed a while with God before getting the courage to open the door.
Jerome glanced up at Clay's face with a frown. "That good, hunh?"
"I'm not ready to talk about it yet, Jerome," Clay breathed.
Nodding knowingly, Jerome walked with Clay through the doctor's office to the waiting SUV. He drove the silent young man back to his home. "Take care, okay man? And talk to your wife."
Clay acknowledged Jerome with a single nod, too distracted to invest himself in more. He stood there for a moment as the bodyguard drove away before turning back to his house. Taking a deep breath, Clay walked towards the door and quietly entered. He shut the door behind him with little sound, not wanting to disturb Kate in whatever she was currently doing.
But Kate glanced up from her work at the kitchen table. She took in his somber expression in an instant and closed her eyes for the shortest of moments before standing and crossing over to him. "Clay... talk to me," she pleaded.
Opening his mouth, Clay attempted to begin but quickly found himself at a loss for words as the first tear ran down his cheek. Ashamed of his weakness, he reached up to erase it from existence.
Mercifully, Kate didn't seem bothered by either his weakness or his display of emotions. She moved to envelop him in her arms as more tears chased after the first. Holding him close and stroking his hair, she wordlessly allowed him the release of his hurt and frustration as she silently sent up more prayers for her husband and the peace that only God could give him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Later that afternoon
Clay heard someone pick up the phone on the other end of the line. "Hello?" a familiar woman's voice greeted.
"Hey, Mom," Clay responded, laying back on the couch to rest comfortably in his wife's arms.
"Clayton," Faye answered him. "How did your appointment go?"
"Not too good," Clay acknowledged as he stroked one of Kate's arms wrapped fondly around his torso. "The doctor said nodes."
Faye stifled a sigh at hearing the news none of them wanted to receive. "At least you'll get that vacation your fans have been wanting you to take."
Clay snorted. "I just spent a week in
"You need a vacation," Faye told him. "The two of you were working that week teaching bible school and building orphanages. Now you need some time for just the two of you to unwind."
"You sound like my in-laws," Clay frowned.
"I knew I liked them for some reason," Faye teased.
"Thanks."
Kate grunted. "What, are our parents conspiring against us?"
"Yes," Clay told her. "My mom agrees with your parents on the 'take a break' suggestion." Grinning as Kate rolled her eyes, he returned to the phone conversation.
"How are you doing with the news?" Faye asked.
"I'd be lying if I said I took it well," Clay admitted. "I'm definitely doing better now that the initial shock has worn off. The doctor gave me a hopeful prognosis if I mind all my P's and Q's, but I still got kind of emotional after my appointment was done. Poor Kate got to put up with all of that."
Squeezing him gently, Kate kissed his cheek. "That's what I'm here for, sweetheart."
"And you do it so well," Clay responded.
Kate smiled at him. "You'd do the same for me in a heartbeat."
Clay bit his lip self-consciously before replying. "I love you, honey. Of course I want to do anything I can for you."
"Same reason I put up with all of that from you." Kate shrugged. "Today was my turn to listen to you. Tomorrow might be your turn to listen to me."
"Welcome to married life, Clayton," Faye replied warmly.
The corner of Clay's mouth turned up ever so slightly at the women's assessments. A person tended to hear either the fairytale happily-ever-after stories of marriage, or else all the horror stories of marriage, with very little in between to reflect the truth of reality. Clay's own experience with marriage seemed to be a lot closer to reality, and reality varied from day to day.
"So what happened between the end of your appointment and now?" Faye asked.
"Let's see..." Clay mused. "Jerome drove me back home, and I cried and got everything out in front of Kate. We talked a lot more once I started feeling better. Now that I'm calm and rational again, I figured it was safe to start calling people with the news."
"What made you so upset?"
Clay thought for a moment before answering. "I've always believed that everything might disappear at a moment's notice, but I thought it would be because I wasn't popular with the listeners any more. I didn't even think that it would be due to a loss of ability on my part. It's really frightening to have your own body rebelling against you and having no control over it." He ended quietly, still unnerved by the knowledge that his health was more fragile than he once believed. Like most people his age, he hadn't ever thought something like this would happen to him.
"That it is," Faye agreed. "Have you tried to find God's will in this?"
"We've just started, but the answers may take time." Clay continued to stroke Kate's arm gently. "Kate's taken the opportunity to remind me that God has plans for us and won't leave us without hope."
Faye's smile could almost be heard across the phone. "That He does. He has been leading you down a very special path, Clayton, ever since you were a little boy. And I have no doubt in my mind that He still has special things in mind for you and that He will keep on leading you where He wants you."
Clay swallowed the lump that had collected in his throat. "Thanks, Mom."
"Keep on seeking His heart, Clayton, and you know that He will bless you with opportunities and every good thing for you and your family." Faye sighed gently and went on. "Since you will be taking a break from singing for a while, have you given thought as to what you will be doing for the next while?"
"A little."
Faye took this time to give him a few thoughts of her own. "I remember you saying that you wanted to do a variety show, honey. This might be the time to do that. Just think - it will still be an opportunity for you to reach people as God leads you to, it will still give you opportunities to talk about causes you and Kate believe in, it will allow you to still make a wholesome contribution to the entertainment world..." She paused to give her last point dramatic emphasis. "... and it will provide a regular, stable schedule and income for you and Kate as you are getting ready for your first child."
It didn't take very long for Clay to decide that this was one of the better possibilities for the near future. My mother is a genius, Clay thought. "I'll have to bounce that one off of Kate to see what she thinks, but I like your suggestion." Winking at Kate as she gave him a curious look, he told her about another thought of his. "Maybe I'm not supposed to be singing right now, but that doesn't mean I can't start looking ahead towards other music projects. You know I've talked about albums that I possibly wanted to record, a benefit album for BAF and a Christian album being some of them."
"I remember."
"There's nothing saying that we can't be in the planning stages right now," Clay told her. "This is the time to start writing music for those albums."
Faye perked up more at this. "Are you going to be putting some of your music on there?"
Clay flushed lightly. "I don't know about that, Mom. I've talked to Mom Kirche and cousin Sally about writing some music for the two albums, and both of them are interested. Kate's willing to write lyrics, but she doesn't feel she can handle writing the music."
"Ah pooh," Faye sighed. "I was hoping that you would finally start singing some of your own things."
"Mom..." Clay protested. "What I write isn't that good. It's just... what I write."
Kate poked him lightly in the side. "One of these days I'm going to sneak into your laptop and read your music to find out if it's half as bad as you say, or whether you're just feeding me a line."
"Don't you dare."
Faye laughed. "If she does, she'll find out that you're better than you give yourself credit for."
"It's not that good," Clay insisted.
"Prove it to me," Kate challenged. "When we're done talking to Mom, prove it to me by showing me your songs and how bad they really are."
"You'd like that," he smirked.
Kate nodded. "So are you gonna?"
Clay glared at her. "You are such a pain."
"Yep."
Still giggling at their banter, Faye responded to him. "Some days you might think that, but it's because she loves you and believes in you. She believes in who you are and what God can do through you. Which is why she believes in your abilities, too - they are God-given."
"Yes, they are," Clay agreed wholeheartedly. He and Kate both held the belief that any good thing in them - personality, skills, or whatever - came directly from God and depended wholly on their identities as His children.
"Then trust in them and in the God who gave them to you," Faye told her son. "He hasn't let you down so far, why should He start now?"
Even Clay couldn't argue with her logic. Heaving a long, slow sigh, he acquiesced to her pleas. "All right, Mom. I'll consider it."
That alone was a victory as far as Faye was concerned. "I hope you do. Now hand the phone to your lovely wife so that I can give her a dose of the medicine I just gave you."
Choosing not to warn Kate, he handed the phone to her. "Your turn to talk to Mom."
"Thank you, sweetheart," Kate replied. She put the phone up to her ear. "Hi, Mom!"
"Kate, I thank God every day for placing you into Clayton's life," Faye began. "You are one of the best things that's ever happened to him."
Instantly Kate flushed self-consciously. "Um... thank you," she stammered. In spite of the fact that Kate would not have said that of herself, she wasn't about to tell this to her mother-in-law.
Clay patted Kate's knee. "If what she said about you was something good, I second it."
The color of Kate's cheeks deepened, and she scrambled to change the subject. "So you finally talked him into using his own songs on an album?"
"I said I'd consider it," Clay broke in.
Faye snickered. "There you have it."
Kate nodded. "That's more than we had a few minutes ago."
"And while we're on the subject, you're probably selling yourself short too, Kate," Faye told her.
"I just write the poetry used for the lyrics," Kate protested. "I can't write music."
"Have you ever tried it?"
"No..." Kate answered.
"Then how do you know you can't if you haven't tried?" Faye asked gently.
"I... well... um..."
Clay glanced over his shoulder at his wife. "All right, Mom! You have her speechless!"
Kate smacked him on the arm as Faye laughed warmly. "Who asked the peanut gallery?"
"So does that make me nuts?"
Both women groaned at Clay's sharp, dry wit. "Do we have to claim him?"
"Hey..."
Faye sighed. "I bore him, you married him. Doesn't look like we have a choice." The two snickered before Faye continued. "How much do you know about the mechanics of music?"
Kate shrugged. "I know enough to make me dangerous, but not enough to make me useful. It would take at least two of me to have enough knowledge to add up to one of Mom or Sally, but then again we would kind of be duplicating ourselves, wouldn't we?"
Faye snickered. "Would you say that you probably know enough about music to write melodies for the songs you and Clay write?"
"I... dunno," Kate whispered. "Maybe. Even if I did try to write the music, there's no guarantee that it would be any good."
Clay eyed her. "You sound like me, honey, except that I know you can write really good music."
"I only wrote the words," Kate sighed. "Mom wrote the music."
"I still say you would write beautiful music," Clay insisted.
"So could you."
"Keep trying, Kate honey," Faye chuckled lightly. "Keep encouraging him in any way you can. You're his greatest ally right now, and as long as you believe in him, he'll find the strength to do everything God asks of him."
"I will, Mom," Kate agreed. "I may have to glean ideas from you or others from time to time on how to do it, but I will keep encouraging him." Kate felt Clay squeeze her arms tight against his torso and knew that he was appreciating every way that she did.
"You're a very loving and intelligent woman, Kate," Faye told her. "I have no doubt in my mind that too you are capable of accomplishing great things as God leads you to do."
Kate started to wonder just how much Faye Parker and her own mother talked on a regular basis - Clay's mom was beginning to sound an awful lot like her own. "If God is behind something one or both of us does, Mom, absolutely nothing is going to stop it from succeeding. That's the way He works."
"Then believe in yourself and your projects," Faye answered. "The two of you have God's love in your hearts and you want nothing more than to be a channel for that love. So keep trying, keep reaching, keep doing. Believe me, that love will be visible in everything that you undertake."
The three of them wrapped up the phone conversation, leaving Clay and Kate gazing thoughtfully into each other's eyes without saying a word for several minutes. Kate was the first one to speak. "We are really blessed, aren't we?"
Clay nodded, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "We are." He pulled Kate into a warm embrace, holding her tight for several minutes. Cuddling contentedly, the two of them sat side by side on the couch and continued to talk about the possibilities God had in store for their future.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Two days later
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Evening in the Aiken household
From her seat at the table, Kate glanced up from her work for Emeline's Hope as Clay entered the room. "Hey honey."
"Hey beautiful." Clay deposited a gentle kiss on his wife before pulling out a chair to sit beside her.
"How was the meeting with your management?" she asked, putting her own papers to the side to listen fully to Clay.
Clay nodded slowly. "As good as can be expected, considering that I'm not supposed to sing for a while," he snorted.
"Not happy campers, were they?"
"That's an understatement. At least they realized that they couldn't be mad at me, because I didn't ask for this to happen." He bit his lip. "They were happy to hear that I had come up with some other alternatives of what to do for the next little while though, and they were all over themselves trying to figure out where to take it from there."
Kate made a face at his choice of words. "Haven't they realized yet that you're in charge of your life, and you call the shots?"
Clay shrugged. "I might be in charge of my life, but my career is often another matter."
"I know that we're completely new to the business compared to some of them," Kate admitted, "but they should not be allowed to run amuck with demands and your schedule. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's not good for you or your loved ones or the public in the long haul."
"That's right," Clay agreed, "and now that I have a family to consider, I'm trying to take more charge of my career. They may not like it, and we argue plenty about it, but they have to respect me and my wishes, or I won't..." He trailed off, leaving that one to the imagination.
Kate snickered and reached over to squeeze his hand. "Good for you, honey, for standing up for yourself. I'm proud of you."
Clay blushed lightly as he squeezed her hand back. "Thank you."
"Before I forget," Kate recalled, pointing to one of their kitchen counters, "that is for you."
Glancing over at the counter, Clay noticed a brightly-tissued and ribboned gift bag. He turned a curious eye to Kate. "What did you do, honey?" When she acknowledged his question only with a tiny smirk, Clay raised an eyebrow at her. "Not going to tell me anything, are you? You're just going to make me open it. For all I know, you might be getting me back for what I pulled on you the other morning." This time she made no reply, and he stood up to grab the bag and bring it back to the table. Undoing the ribbon that held the gift bag together, he cautiously peeked inside.
"I may still get you back for that, Clayton," Kate acknowledged as he reached into the bag, "but I know better than to try to 'keep up with you' and your impish nature. I'm nowhere as devious as you when it comes to playing pranks. I'm just not that original period."
"I think it's because you're just nicer." Ignoring Kate's self-derisive snort, Clay opened the envelope that he had pulled out of the bag first. Slowly he read the greeting card that she had signed and written a personal message in before smiling. "Thank you, honey." Once again Clay delved into the bag for what secret treasures it contained.
"Don't thank me until you've seen everything," Kate warned. "You may decide something in there isn't worth thanking me for."
One at a time Clay looked through the thoughtful little things that she had included in the bag to somehow help him out or make him laugh. At last he pulled out what was on the very bottom of the bag - a spiral-bound journal and a brand-new pen. Clay blinked with confusion and curiosity at this last gift before looking up at his wife. "What's this for?" he asked.
Kate explained. "Sometimes when you're at a turning point in your life, it helps you learn and grow from the experience if you reflect from time to time. One way to reflect is through journaling." She shrugged lightly. "I didn't know if this would work for you, but at various times in my life it has worked for me. And more often than not, journaling has helped me come up with some of the poetry that Mom has used as song lyrics. Of course how you use it is entirely up to you."
Clay smiled slowly at the meaning behind her choice of gifts. She's encouraging me again, he mused. In her own little way, she's encouraging me and telling me she believes I can do it. He looked up at her, a warm twinkle in his eye. "Thank you, honey. I know what you're trying to do with this, and believe me, I appreciate the thought."
Kate felt that there was an afterthought to his statement. "But..."
He shook his head. "I've usually done all my journaling on my computer. That way there's no hard copy of it just laying around where people can get their hands on it, and it's always been locked with a password. I always type that one in from memory whenever I want to open the file... unlike the rest of my passwords, which my computer remembers for me."
Snickering lightly, Kate skewered him with an impish look. "I think you would have learned from your experience two summers ago when your laptop got trashed by that virus. Between the virus putting it in the shop and messing with your passwords, you were without your computer how long?"
"Don't remind me," Clay grumbled.
"At least it meant that you weren't lurking on the boards when you should have been sleeping and trying to get over your bug."
Clay glared at his wife. "You sound awfully satisfied about that."
Kate returned the glare. "Back then I didn't exactly have the authority to tie you to the bed."
"Oo, kinky. I like the sound of that."
Men. Can't live with them, can't trade them for green stamps. Kate rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you'd be disappointed when it was only to make sure you actually slept like a good boy should."
"Aw, Kate..." Clay pretended to pout for just the briefest of moments. "Here I was hoping one of these days you'd tie me to the bed and ravish me."
As Clay waggled his eyebrows at her, Kate turned several shades of delicate pink. "You'd like that way too much."
Clay giggled at her embarrassed reaction. Teasing her was half the fun. The other half was when she teased him back. "Has anyone ever told you how charming it is when you blush?"
Kate made a face at him. "Yeah, right."
"I mean it."
"If you say so."
He could tell that she wasn't buying it. Sighing gently, he changed the subject. "Do you really want to see some of the things I've written?"
Kate's eyes lit up. "Oh gosh, yes."
"I'd be willing to show you some of mine in exchange for seeing some of yours."
Chewing her lip at his offer of a trade, Kate debated that one for a couple of minutes before making her decision. She knew that she wanted to see what he had written, but she wasn't sure whether he would be that excited to see her material. "All right. We can do that after dinner."
"Sounds like a plan."
The two of them exchanged light chat as they ate, enjoying each other's company and the simple meal. Once they were finished, they cleaned up the table before going to the study where Clay's computer was. He started it up while Kate searched for her own file of writings. Finally she found them and brought them over to where Clay had already placed a second chair for her beside his computer. Turning to a collection of love songs, Clay pulled up one of the simpler ones and read it to her quietly, keeping his voice at an even keel to hide the emotions that wanted to creep in to it.
Suddenly he heard a sniffle from Kate. Clay turned to look at her, noticing immediately the tears running down her cheeks. "Kate??" he breathed with bewilderment. "What's wrong, honey?"
"I liked your song?" she suggested half-heartedly.
"All right," Clay answered, feeling that it was such a lame reply
to her kind words. Somehow Clay knew that those same words were not what was
making her cry. Although he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to unleash one more
potential problem, he knew he needed to for Kate's sake and for the sake of
keeping their relationship healthy. "I guess I don't know why you're
crying at this one when this is just one of my little ones. I haven't
showed you any of the really emotional ones yet - I thought I'd start small.
Are you sure there's nothing wrong?" he asked, hoping that she would bail
him out of his confusion. Please tell me if there is...
"I... I don't know, Clay. I've been doing this more often lately,"
she confessed with a tiny sob. "My emotions go from quiet to crazy in
about three seconds flat, and it happens all the time any more. I think that
was part of why we had that dumb argument about the pool thing in
At last Clay understood. Kate was dealing with pregnancy mood swings, and he was witnessing one in action. Although he wasn't about to tell her, he was actually quite relieved to find out that was all it was. "Actually, you can still blame this one on hormones, honey. It's the baby talking."
"I wondered about that." She shrugged. "I guess I still thought that I could have some control over this. Believe me, Love, I'm trying."
"And I appreciate your efforts," Clay told her honestly. "But you don't have to be in complete control all the time. People who are like that tend to have nervous breakdowns. What was that saying you told me Patsy Clairmont has about emotions?"
Kate giggled lightly. "Emotions don't have brains."
"Exactly. You can't control having emotions, honey. You can only control what you do with them." Clay watched his wife scrub another batch of tears from her cheeks. "Come'ere, honey..." he soothed, pulling her into his arms. He embraced her for several minutes, until the worst of the tears had subsided. Keeping one arm wrapped warmly around her to hold her close, Clay turned back to the computer to show Kate more of his songs. After a couple more, he glanced at her. "Can I see a few of yours?" he pleaded, hoping to see some of what she had written before he showed her some of his "deeper" songs.
"All right." Kate opened up her file and paged through to the first one. "It's not that great," she apologized as she handed it to him.
Clay scanned it before shaking his head. "There's nothing wrong with this at all, honey. It's good."
"Really?"
"Yeah," he agreed. "If I know you, you have others in there every bit as good."
Or better, I hope. That wasn't one of my better ones. Kate rifled through her stack until she came up with another song, this one a little more serious. "What do you think of this one?"
Clay read this one a little more slowly to catch all of the meaning. "Oh wow."
"Is that a good 'wow' or a bad 'wow'?" Kate asked unsurely.
"That's a good 'wow'."
Kate sighed, relaxing at his acceptance of her work. "I've got all sorts of different poetry and songs in this file. Christian songs, love songs, harmless secular songs, multi-layer songs..."
"I'm not sure I want to show you the rest of mine," Clay admitted. "They're not that good."
"Please?" Kate begged. "What you've shown me so far is really good. And we've never been afraid to show each other our hearts before..."
Clay blushed fiercely as he thought of a few of the things he wrote. "True, but I've got a few things that are - well - a little embarrassing."
"Embarrassing?" Kate asked, puzzled at his reaction. "What's embarrassing about them?"
"I um..." His blush deepened. "I wrote some of them with you in mind."
"Oh." Kate smiled shyly, stealing a coy glance at him. "That makes two of us, then." Surprised by this revelation, Clay looked up into her eyes. The couple gazed into each other's soul for a few minutes before Kate shook herself out of the trance. "Speaking of the baby talking, I need to find the bathroom. I'll be back in a minute, and then we can share more of our songs with each other. Hopefully we can share some of those that um... we wrote about each other."
Clay nodded, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "I'd like that." He watched her as she walked down the hall before turning back to his computer with a nervous sigh. Although they were man and wife, on deeply intimate terms and having a child together, there was still something about sharing those songs with Kate that made him feel especially vulnerable. He had told her his feelings before, but writing them out seemed to somehow be more personal. Maybe it was the sense of permanence, the fact that they were etched out in black and white for all to see, compared to the spoken language which faded away on the wind and remained only in the minds of those present. It didn't help that his writings ranged from the completely basic and harmless all the way to deeply intimate.
"Back," Kate told him when she returned and plopped down in the chair again.
"Feel better?" he asked with an impish twinkle in his eye.
"Much. I can't wait for the day when Joseph's big enough to play kickball with my bladder."
Laughing openly as Kate rolled her eyes, Clay reached over to squeeze her hand. "Just think of it this way: the bigger he gets, the sooner it will be before he's out of you and in our arms."
A huge grin lit up Kate's face. "Yes. Believe me, mister, I'm looking forward to making you a daddy." She squeezed his hand in return.
Grinning uncontrollably at the idea, Clay found himself unable to look away from his wife. "I'm looking forward to being father of your children... and to making you a mom." In spite of her blush, he could see in her eyes that his words excited her immensely. Clay scrolled through his file again, keeping Kate's hand firmly in his as he searched for the one he wanted to find. At last he found it and displayed it on the page. "Shortly after I realized that I had feelings for you, I wrote this one."
Her heart beating a little more loudly inside of her, Kate read the poem on the computer screen. "Wow, Clay. I never... wow." Turning to her own file, Kate dug through it to find a poem of her own. "Here's the first, um, love poem I wrote about you."
By the time Clay finished reading it, he felt a lump in his throat the size of a golf ball. "I... whoo."
The song and poetry sharing continued in this manner for some time, with each exchange getting deeper and more emotional for the couple. At last both of them were in tears, overwhelmed by everything they had read and taken in. The rest of what they had written could wait until tomorrow. Something else needed to be shared right now. "I love you."
"I love you."
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9