The Adamses and the O'Sheas Meet

An Alternate History: A Reimagined 1981

Of all the places in all the world in the U.K. summer of 1981 they could’ve met, the four members of the O’Shea family walked onto the Paddington train-station platform and seated themselves beside the four members of the Adams family awaiting the arrival of the train going northwest to Oxford. Picking out the stranger nearest her age, on the last weeks of ten, Jo O’Shea seated herself next to a young girl and burst out with, “We’re going to High Wycombe.” Jo offered a big smile as a greeting to Baba Adams, also just two months shy of eleven, who looked up from THE TIMES newspaper and raised her right eyebrow, a peculiar trait the two Adams children, Baba and her 16-year-old brother Stacy, shared. It meant potential amusement could be had here yet enthusiasm will be held in check for now.

“Oh, that’s nice. Not too far, is it. I’ve been studying the train timetables,” Baba said quietly and genuinely but matter-of-factly and went back to reading the article about labor strikes and how they’d potentially alter the results of the upcoming elections.

The Adams parents, Ellen and Jimmy, bought the paper for Baba to appease her constant requests for more and more reading material. They hadn’t quite yet noticed that their younger child understood the news stories far more deeply than they or their son did. They simply thought the newspaper would keep her quiet for a little while while they again discussed the day’s planned-down-to-the-minute itinerary, to be mostly spent seeing the hot spots quickly in Oxford and then to Scotland for a fast tour of Edinburgh Castle.

Nine-year-old Maz O’Shea hung on every word and gesture of her older sister Jo but remained seated in her widely-collared white shirt and green plaid vest, her parents Paddy and Shirley O’Shea between her and her sister, on the south end of the bench. On the far north end of the same long bench, Stacy, wearing a tight collarless, sleeveless mustard-yellow half-shirt which long ago had been a long-sleeved mustard-yellow mock turtleneck, sat clenching and relaxing his ab muscles, his eyebrows level, and fleetingly wondered what his sister was on about but then tuned her out and welcomed visions of himself, braver and stronger than all, winning medieval battles, dragons to be slain by his longsword and damsels and knights in distress to be saved by him far in the past at Edinburgh Castle, which he’d finally get to see in person after the endless study of London. This for him, after the disappointment of their British stay so far, was going to be the highlight of his family’s European vacation, far across the Atlantic from their home in Alabama, U.S.A., where he loved to run back and forth with much attempting of derring-do across various fields of athletic play and even solo forays across pastures and through patches of pine woods scattered with evergreen hardwood trees, always running and fighting to win and to be the best.

Jo said to Baba, “Where are you going? Are you American?”

“Oxford, then Edinburgh, in Scotland. Yes. How’d you know we’re American?”

“Oh, I plan to travel the world,” Jo impossibly widened her already huge smile, “I want to save all the children everywhere. I can already speak French and Spanish. American English sounds like music to me.” She pulled her fingers through her thick dark hair.

Baba’s right eyebrow remained at attention and a hint of a smile ran across her face. “I can only speak English, American English, I guess, which doesn't really carry a tune, in my opinion. Your British accent though sounds so...” Baba squinted, “...sing-songy. Much better than American voices.”

“Oh, no,...” Jo looked up to her parents for support that American English sounded better than British, but both were caught up in a quick conversation about how wonderful American country music was, which had sparked when they'd heard Baba begin talking in her Southern American accent. Paddy O’Shea loved being surrounded by the English voices of his three O’Shea girls more than anything else in his north-of-London world. There though during quiet moments American voices and music, especially Loretta Lynn’s, Patsy Cline’s, Tammy Wynette’s, Jim Reeves’ and Eddy Arnold’s, had always enchanted him with visions of visiting the Grand Ol' Opry. Somehow, this young girl's voice in person suddenly made it real to him that someday he could set out on a pilgrimage to magical Nashville. Jo turned back to Baba and said, “You're here on vacation?”

“Believe it or not, we’re here because my brother won a regional extemporaneous speech contest. The prize was to come here with the other American winners to be in a contest with the best British teen speakers. Families got to come, too.”

“Extemporaneous? What’s that?”

“Oh, it means something like 'I look charming and sound smart after coming up with a speech on a secret current-events topic after being given only an hour to prepare, but I don’t really understand anything I’m gibbering about, but I get by on my instinct to open my baby-blue eyes widely in a dramatic way at just the right time.'” Baba frowned using only her eyes, exactly the same color as Stacy’s. Stacy meanwhile had finished his hourly ab crunches and had stood up in his short short blue gym shorts, walked behind the bench, and was now using the back of the bench to stretch out his legs, which were dubiously short for someone already almost six feet tall.

Jo didn’t quite follow Baba’s brand of American irony nor many of her word choices but looked Stacy up and down. She liked his curly blond hair but preferred darker hair, like her own, which also nearly matched the color of Baba’s long straight hair. While on a school trip to London's West End the previous year, Jo had been accosted by a strange prim woman, who seemed as if she'd just flown down into the street straight out of a 1960s movie musical, who told Jo to be on the lookout for a dark-haired man known only as D_, her true love when she grew up would begin with “D_.” Since “Stacy” didn't even have a “d” anywhere in it, she let him continue his exercises without the continued weight of her glance.

Baba continued, “My brother came in second place behind some British guy called John, who said he plans to be a novelist. God bless Stacy, that’s my brother, and his lack of awareness of any kind, but I did think he spoke more clearly and, of course, much more engagingly than that John person, who seemed scatterbrained and rather self-loathing too. Stacy always seems to come in second place a lot though, even all the sports teams he's on, too.”

Maz didn’t really understand much the other girls were talking about, but her heart was huge and understood much more mightily than her brain that this winner John person needed help and that Stacy probably needed something, too; but her young mind didn’t know what. Maz’s heart understood though that all of Stacy’s stretching and eye-widening and tummy exercising was a defeated sort of plea to get some kind of attention since he didn’t seem capable of winning some attention outright through victory. Something was stopping him.

Maz looked up at her parents and over to her sister still talking with the American girl. She got up and walked behind the bench. Stacy met her gaze, Maz all dark eyes and freckles, and wondered what the little girl was up to. While their two sets of parents and their two siblings were locked in three impenetrable conversations, Maz reached out to the older American stranger with her small right hand. Stacy could tell she wanted to say something.

Continually confused anyway and even more befuddled now, he slowly stretched down, his left leg still stretched up onto the back on the bench, and let the little girl hold his left hand. Maz whispered up into Stacy’s ear from her heart, “Love yourself.”

She backed away and reseated herself on the bench where her parents were thrilled listening to the musical Southern voices of the Alabama parents going on and on about train timetables and their itinerary, which just couldn’t be changed, wide-collared country boys and rhinestone-bedecked country gals in green singing in the O'Sheas imaginations. They looked into each others eyes and smiled as the knowing Southern tones of the shockingly brilliant little American girl continued entertaining their self-assured child Jo, to whom they could also listen for hours and hours. They knew Jo was going to rule the world; they immediately picked up on the hyper-intelligence of the American girl; they glanced over and made sure their little Maz was next to them. They hadn’t quite yet noticed that their younger child had the biggest heart in all the world.

All seven joined Stacy standing as the train arrived. His right eyebrow had twitched slightly upward, and he seemed a bit less confused and was as relaxed as was possible for him in 1981. Jo and Baba continued talking as they boarded the train but had to separate as the only two sets of seats on the train car big enough for young families of four were far apart.


* * *


None of them would see each other again for over sixteen years when one of them walked into, of all the places in all the world where one could re-meet someone, a small pub called Salas in a small tent off a small side-street, just outside huge Tokyo, Japan, in a busy smog-choked suburb called Funabashi.


(...not the end...)



All writing contained in this web log is COPYRIGHT 2010 Michael S Adams (inspired by an amazing woman and by a picture of her as a young freckled girl in a widely-collared white shirt and green plaid vest... Traits and personalities and dialogue of all characters are fictionalized as are all events. No actual similarities or intentions, etc etc etc...legal-eze, blah, blah, blah...)