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The Wicke family name wasn't exactly one that would echo majestically through halls hung smartly with portraits of former patriarchs. Susanna got her first job at the tender age of 13 to help with her mother's medical expenses, her older sisters having already dropped out of college to find gainful employment as soon as it became clear just how costly a cancer diagnosis could be. Even with four incomes including their father's, they barely scraped together at the end of the month. Financial worries put a strain on the family, but while bickering was commonplace, they made a concerted effort to stay upbeat and put their faith in God and one another. After all, they still had those things, if nothing else.
It was at her third job and in her 22nd year, hostessing at a midscale restaurant in Miami, that she met Theodore. He was on vacation, he told her. Canadian originally, he'd moved to London to take over his father's construction firm that had landed several lucrative contracts and risen steadily over the years to the top of the field. She knew he was trying to impress her, but he was unassuming and funny, and when he came in without his family and specifically asked to be seated close to her booth for the third day running, she finally allowed him to write his phone number on her hand at the end of her shift. It was a whirlwind romance. He swept her off her feet in every way, including once or twice the physical. Susanna had never been so doted on before in her life, never been anyone's sole focus. His money saved her family and while she quietly thought perhaps she should protest, insist he couldn't buy her, she let him do it. To his credit, Theodore never once acted as though it meant she owed him anything. Susanna's sisters re-enrolled in college, and she followed him home to become his wife. Three years later, James Alexander was born - landing squarely in the lap of luxury. The roly-poly bundle of joy wanted for nothing - in fact he hardly knew what it was to want. He asked for things and he got them. Some would say that it was a miracle that he grew up with such a sweet temperament - but they didn't see the home situation. How his parents were involved as much as they could be, encouraged his interests, provided avenues toward anything he might want to explore - but at the same time, they respected him. He was given privacy, agency, choices that he would not unless necessary be shielded from the consequences of. And from their respect of him, and others around the family, so James learned to respect others. And from his mother's rule of regularly going through his things and donating those he no longer used to the less fortunate, and occasional field trip like expeditions to volunteer at food banks and homeless shelters, he learned generosity and kindness. Never did really get a grasp on the value of money though, but he was luckily not prone to flaunting his situation anyway. This clumsy kid, quick to laugh off his own mistakes and to forgive those of other people, found the thing that made him different when at age eight his class read the book Matilda. It's probably fair to say that every child who has ever read that book or seen the movie adaptation immediately went on to try out the little girl's magic for themselves. Most obviously failed - stared for ten or so seconds at a motionless Cheerio before giving up with just the slightest disappointment. James, however, didn't. The Cheerio slid happily across the kitchen counter to land on the tiles opposite. And so did the second. And the third. Mara, the cleaning lady, clicked her tongue and shook her head with a small smile when she came in - assuming by the pile of cereal on the floor that James had just knocked over the box. He was prone to that kind of thing after all. Studiously, James kept this newfound 'magic' to himself. Yes, he kept playing with it - graduating from Cheerios to chocolate bars to books and beyond - but he never told anyone. For years he kept it to himself, not as a deep dark secret that weighed down his soul but as a sort of private hobby that brought a smile to a bad day. He developed something of a bad habit of making rude people drop things as a tiny form of mostly harmless revenge, and would often grab things from across the room when he didn't feel like getting up, but otherwise didn't really use it anyway. And it was easy enough to claim ignorance when he got tired or frightened and accidentally knocked something over that he was nowhere near. Armed with eight GCSEs at C or above, high passes in his A-levels (English, French and History) and an unconditional offer from the University of Norwich, 18 year old James took off on his gap year. He'd never been a stranger to traveling, having visited a new country during every summer vacation since his infancy, and for this first big trip without his family he decided to try visiting every state in the USA. Five days per state with a meticulously planned itinerary supplied by one of the friends he went with, blitzing through tourist traps and piling into giggling heaps in huge hotel suites meant for two but with enough room for twenty. Perhaps the experience would have been worth more spiritually had they not all cheerfully brought their charge cards with them, but all the same it was the most fun James had ever had in his life. He shuffled back through the Arrivals gate at Gatwick with a smile that was no less bright for being so tired, an entire extra suitcase full of souvenirs, and a million stories to tell everyone he'd left at home. As it turned out, his mother had a story to tell him too. While he'd been gone, his parents had spent almost the entire time separated and were now midway through proceedings to formally divorce. His mother was moving back to Florida, and she wanted him to go with her. It wasn't a demand, and he could have said no if he wanted to. Could have stayed with his dad in London, taken his place at Norwich, come away with a fistful of certificates that gave him a foundation on which to build his dream of becoming a novelist. But James' father took him aside and privately told him that he should go. That he could build his dream in America just as easily, and that while he was still wanted and welcome to stay if he chose, it would be the smarter thing to leave. There was more for him out there, including a place at Louisiana's prestigious Tulane University secured through an old family friend. So he went. He picked up his life and took it with him to Florida, to the huge house his maternal aunts had been set up in and didn't really seem to know what to do with. The Wickes would have been more comfortable now anyway, having been more than helped out of the hole medical bills had put them in; but Theodore had left Susanna with more than just a goodbye. As it turned out James was barely there three months before he was moving in to the dorms at Tulane to take up the English study he'd meant to continue in Norwich. James had never been shy. He was a genuine, personable kind of guy who, while academically above average and more well-read than you'd think, wasn't good at picking up on hints and was generally regarded as a big dumb goofball. But all the same he seemed very much to find himself at Tulane. He immediately fell in love with New Orleans - its vibrance and life, its people and history, its fierce small-town feel despite its size and its love affair with the arts. As an English major with a Creative Writing focus, his assigned writings would swing wildly between rhythmic technicolor starbursts of New Orleans life and the steadier blue-grey-green of his fond memories of London. That and his accent (mostly the accent) got him quickly labeled as 'the British guy', something akin to a zoo exhibit as sparkly eyed native New Orleanians asked him endless questions about the other side of the pond. He quite liked it actually. He met most of his new friends that way. In four years that felt like almost no time at all, James traded his accent (which didn't take long to fade, having never been that strong anyway) for a BA in English, and went back to his mother. To the big house that echoed because its inhabitants didn't know what to put in it. To a place he'd never called home, away from every one of his friends. He tried to make the best of it; cultivate yet another new social circle, try volunteering again like he had when he was a kid, work on one of the million unfinished ideas for that all-important first novel. But despite it all he withered. Even the 'magic', the useful little trick he'd never thought too far into for fear of happening on questions too big for him to answer, didn't help. He missed England. He missed New Orleans. He missed feeling like he belonged somewhere. It wasn't an easy thing, but eventually Susanna had to face up to the fact that just because Miami was the home of her childhood, that didn't make it home to her beloved son. She framed it through tears as asking him to move out, pretending that she'd changed her mind and that he was old enough to make his own way in the world. They both knew what she meant. She'd wanted to keep him under her wing, but he was 25 now and it was high time he spread his own. James could have moved back to England, but he chose instead the closer of his heart's two dwellings. He'd only ever been a student in New Orleans and maybe it should have felt more like a guest house, a hotel - but he was immediately at home again just as soon as he stepped off the plane. He had a realtor to meet. Not in the inner city, which as a guy living truly on his own for the first time he shied at the last minute away from, but a suburb. An unthreatening little place named River Ridge, that a fling from college had once told him about with a glint in his eye and an unsettlingly knowing look. Even the realtor seemed to take a second to appraise him before deciding to show him the property - as if he wasn't the one paying her for her time. It's been two years since that day, and... well, it's not exactly as James expected. Apparently he wasn't the only one who could do things like he could after all. At first he'd been taken aback - he hadn't got the warning everyone else had, hadn't heard the whispers or been shown in by someone they trusted. He just found himself in the middle of all this, a community he'd never noticed that he lacked until it was suddenly around him and he remembered what it was like to properly relax around other people. Who knew home could be so many different things at once? |
To those who don't know him James might seem like a pretty imposing guy - 6'2 and built like a cage fighter (if not quite in the same peak physical condition as one), he definitely doesn't look like the kind of dude you'd want to meet in a dark alley. But the fact is that actually, he's exactly the kind of dude you'd want to meet in a dark alley: assuming he wasn't as freaked out as you were, this gentle giant would be the one to offer a stranger some company or a ride home without a second thought.
As a friend he's a docile kind of guy and will put up with a lot without complaint, though of course there's only so far anyone can be pushed before they push back. He avoids confrontation as a general rule. But at the same time, he's also the one guy in a group who will notice that everyone's hemming and hawwing about what to do and take the initiative himself to start throwing out concrete ideas. He's funny, generous, spontaneous and easygoing almost to a fault. Speaking of faults, everyone's got them, and James is no exception. The spontaneity can occasionally be a little much - not everyone is a bored writer living off a trust fund who can afford to suddenly decide to go on vacation next month, and some people have to be up in the morning for their actual jobs and can't just jump in his car to go along for a drive at three in the morning. He means well, but he can be infuriatingly oblivious, failing to pick up on all but the most obvious of hints. The rich kid thing, too, has its good and bad points. It's not difficult to take this guy for a ride when all you want is someone to pay for dinner - he'll trust someone as soon as looking at them. He's well liked by service personnel because he makes absolutely sure to be cool to them, and prefers to just leave way too much for a tip than bother working out exactly how much he's supposed to be leaving. But that's the thing - not everyone appreciates having expensive gifts randomly foisted on them white elephant style, and just being a nice guy with a charge card isn't going to solve every problem. When it comes to his writing, James is surprisingly quiet. True to the eccentric creative trope, occasionally he'll vanish off the face of the planet for a few days and hole himself up typing madly into Word in dark rooms like a weird kind of millennial Poe, but he doesn't like to show it to people, and none of what he's written has seen the light of day yet. He's the kind of writer who'll introduce himself as one, talk about what he likes to write about, and then suddenly clam up when asked about specifics. How he's ever going to get anything published is a genuine mystery. Overall James is personable, creative, surprisingly intelligent and an overall nice guy who just happens to be oblivious as all hell and be a little detached from the real world as a result of his silver-spoon upbringing. Eventually he's got to find out that life isn't always as easy as his has been until now. |
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