Committed Chapter 4

Ariadne reached the gate at the entrance to her street and punched in the code at the box by the entrance.

            Her house was on a small cul-de-sac off of a much larger residential street.  The entire cul-de-sac had been bought and paid for by her father and then gated off.  There were three buildings, a garage to the left of the gate which held the families three vehicles, the main house which was directly opposite the gate, and the boat house to the right of the entrance which fed out onto the small lake the cul-de-sac was built alongside.

            Ariadne heard the buzz as the gate lock opened and yanked the black iron to set through.

            Her house had a black iron fence surrounding it with arrowhead points jabbing upward towards the sky.  The pathway leading up to the two story house was constructed from pink stones fashioned into the shape of lily pads with grass growing in between them.

            The lawn was immaculately maintained by her family’s gardener and even with the fall weather moving in the grass was still a vibrant living green.  The property was wide on either side of the house.  There was one maple tree on either side of the house, their massive canopies stretching up and over the fence as well as over the roof.

            The iron gate to the house swung open before Ariadne without a sound.  She hopped the lily pad stones towards the entrance.  On either side of the door were massive windows allowing a clear view outside from the two living rooms.  Ivy grew up the house from beneath these windows, stretching almost to the smaller, circular windows of the upper floor.

            The door itself was white with stained glass windows glinting with all the colours of the rainbow.  Ariadne tested the door handle and found it was unlocked, pushing her way through into the foyer.

            “You’re late!”

            Ariadne rolled her eyes as she kicked her shoes off and dumped her backpack onto the floor beside them.  She strolled forward into the kitchen, the hiss of something cooking on the stove top and the smell of asparagus wafting through the air around her.

            Of course, she found her mother, who had called out to her, waiting for her at the table.

            “Try not to overdue yourself with subtext there, Mom,” Ariadne warned as she slipped into her seat at the table.

            “What is that supposed to mean?” her mother demanded, fixing her with a stern glare.

            Her mother had a hawkish face, hair curled around her head as though it fear the consequences of getting too unruly.  Her eyes were a faded brown, clearly not the source of Ariadne’s own emerald eyes.  Her nose was appropriately angled and hooked to serve as a beak and her lips were needle thing, so much so that they seemed to disappear when she fixed Ariadne with her stern looks, like the one she was gracing her with at that moment.

            “We were expecting you home sooner after volleyball practice.”

            “I was expecting you to be there to pick me up.”          

            “I had more important things to be doing than picking you up.  It was a fine day, you could easily have walked home.”

            “Yes Mom, that’s what I ended up doing.”

            “Why did it take you so long?”

            “It’s an hour long walk Mom, how long did it expect me to take?”

            “Well, you’ve kept us waiting around for you so I hope you’re satisfied.”

            “I couldn’t be more satisfied if I tried,” Ariadne sighed, rolling her eyes, a fact which her mother thankfully missed as she took a sip from the glass of red wine in front of her.

            “Hello Ariadne, we were expecting you home earlier.”

            Her father beamed at her as he entered the room, carrying the frying pan before him.  Her father was a large set man with jovial features so that every aspect of his face seemed to be angled upwards in a smile.  He was not exactly fat but you could hardly call him a skinny man.  His pudgy fingers gripped a spatula which he used to flip two pieces of sizzling ham onto Ariadne’s plate.  She found her mouth-watering as she reached for her fork.  She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the smell of her father’s cooking had reminded her.

            While her mother had absolutely no knowledge in the area of cooking, or any desire whatsoever to learn how, it always fell to her father to cook.  This was no problem for him since he loved to cook and loved the fact that he got to keep his skills honed by making home cooked meals every night.

            While Ariadne didn’t think it was her mother’s responsibility to prepare the meals for the family or anything of the kind, the fact of the matter was that her mother spent the majority of her day at home when she wasn’t out participating in some mundane exercise with her other rich wife friends.  Ariadne had no idea what she did with her time while she was home alone but she knew for certain that nothing ever got done around the house unless it was done by either her father or herself.

            Nevertheless, her mother found plenty of opportunity to complain about the stresses of a housewife lifestyle and alongside her argument that they get a chauffeur she had often attempted to convince her husband to hire a maid.  Not only did Arthur Helen not want anyone, not even a paid employee, having free reign over their house, he saw no reason to hire something to chores that they were each perfectly capable of doing themselves.

            “How was your volleyball practice today, dear?” Arthur asked, scooping two slices of ham onto his wife’s plate, and then two onto his own.

            “We’ve got a game next week so the coach is pushing us pretty hard,” Ariadne replied.  “But nothing we can’t handle.  We’ve won all of our previous games so I’m not too worried about taking on this next team.”

            “Who are you against?”

            “Waterfront High,” Ariadne explained.  “But I seriously doubt the kids from downtown stand a chance against us.  We’re going to mop the floor with them.”

            “Ariadne, you sound so butch when you talk like that,” her mother sighed.  “I don’t know where on earth you get that attitude.  Your father was never much into any kind of low brow activity when he was in high school.”

            “Come on now Crete, if Ariadne wants to indulge herself in some good, healthy exercise I see no reason to discourage her,” Arthur protested, having returned from the kitchen with the pot of asparagus.

            “No,” her mother protested, taking another quick swill of her wine, “it’s gross.  All that unnecessary movement and sweating.  You did shower before you came home, didn’t you?”

            “Yes Mom,” Ariadne sighed, increasing the speed at which she ate her ham.  The sooner she could get away from her mother the better.

            “Good.  If not I would have sent you straight upstairs to shower before you ate.  It’s rude to sit at the table smelling like some kind of Neanderthal.”

            “You know exactly how to make a girl feel wanted.”

            “Don’t talk back to me like that, young lady.”

            “All right Crete, that’s enough,” her father cut in with a note of finality as he sat himself down at the head of the table.  “Anything else of interest at school today, dear?”

            “Well, I did meet Janus Menelaus today.”

            Ariadne felt the entire atmosphere of the table shift.  Her mother, who had been about to take another sip from her wine glass, stopped and set it down carefully.

            “You did, did you?” her father said.  Strangely, his eyes darted to her hand before returning to her face.  “Well, I’m sure it must have come as a bit of a surprise to learn he knew so much about you when you had no idea who he was.”

            “You might say that,” Ariadne nodded.  “How come you’ve never mentioned him before?  He seemed to think his father and you were very close.”

            “Oh, we are, Janus didn’t lie to you about that,” Arthur Helen nodded.  “I’ve just never seen much point in telling you all about the Menelaus’ since they live all the way in Ontario while we’re out here on the east coast.  Our two families are connected mostly through our companies but I am happy to call Zeke Menelaus one of my closest friends.”

            “I’ve never even met him,” Ariadne pointed out.

            “Well, technically you have, but it was much younger.  In fact, you met Janus for the first time when you were probably eleven or twelve months old.  You haven’t seen him since, of course, so you can hardly be expected to remember who he is.”

            “Well, he certainly knew a lot about me.  Said he was coming out here for his final year of high school before he attends Menelaus University.  Is that university named after his family?”

            “Oh yes, Zeke put a lot of money into New Carthage just like I have.”

            “This is all very fascinating, but I’m more interested in how you treated Janus today.  I assume it was his first day at school?” Crete Helen asked, instantly fixing her daughter with an interrogative glare.

            “Yeah, he showed up near the end of history class,” Ariadne replied.

            “Were you nice to him?”

            “What kind of question is that?”

            “I mean, did you show him the kind of courtesy and respect that was due him.”

            “I’m not sure I know what kind of courtesy and respect I was supposed to show him,” Ariadne replied, attempting to dodge the question since she wasn’t inclined to lie to her mother.  Crete Helen also had a knack for seeing right through her lies anyway, no matter how much time she might have spent planning them out.  “I didn’t even know who he was until he told me that our families were friends.”

            “So, basically what you’re saying is that you blew him off,” Crete said sharply.

            “I never said I did that,” Ariadne replied.  “What makes you think he was so interested in me anyway?”

            “Oh, of course he was interested in you,” Crete snapped, waving her hand dismissively as if Janus’ attraction to Ariadne was a given.  Some might have thought this a compliment, but Ariadne knew better than to take it as such.  “Well, it’s good to know that you bungled your chance to make a good first impression.”

            “Well, as I’m glad you’ve already decided that I’ve ‘bungled’ something so important.  But what about him?  What makes you so sure he gave me a good impression of him?”

            “I hardly see how that’s relevant,” Crete replied, taking a large gulp of wine.

            “So, if he had been an overpowering asshole to me today, that wouldn’t matter at all as long as I treated him like a king?”

            “Watch your tongue.”

            “And you watch yours,” Ariadne snapped.  “Looks like Janus wasn’t the only asshole I had to deal with today.”

            Ariadne knew that wasn’t entirely fair to Janus.  In truth, he’d been a little pushy but he hadn’t been as awful as Ariadne was making him out to be now.  But it was too late to take the words back so she decided to just ride the storm out.

            “Oh, you pretentious little bi-“

            “That’s enough!”

            Arthur Helen’s booming voice cut his wife off too late and Ariadne was already glaring at her mother.

            “I’m sorry Dad, I think I’ve just lost my appetite,” Ariadne said, barely above a whisper.  She stood, not bothering to push her chair back in, and began to stomp from the room.

            “Hold on one second,” her father said, holding up one pudgy hand to stop her.  “While I don’t think your mother is in the right state of mind right now to handle this situation…tactfully, I hope you will realize that Janus Menelaus is going to become a powerful man someday and the last thing you want to do is ruin the relationship between his family and ours by being…inconsiderate.”

            “If it makes you feel any better, I’m probably going to be seeing Janus tonight at the Halloween events.  I’ll give him another shot, but I’m not going to pretend to like him if he’s not likeable.”

            “I’m not driving you to that tonight,” her mother reminded her in an icy voice.

            “Don’t worry Mom, I wouldn’t dare expect you to inconvenience yourself for me.”