(This is my first X-Men Evolution fic and, as I usually start off a new fandom, it's an angst. This is a fic that focuses on my favorite characters of X-Men Evo, the Brotherhood. So if your looking for even a MENTION of the X-Geeks, you've clicked on the wrong fic. Because...I'm proud to say, that not ONE of them is mentioned ONCE in this fic. It's nothing but Brotherhoodly goodness. Ah! Enjoy ^.~)
Hideaway
By: ThatGirl
I flicked my head up and the water sprayed the glass in front of me. It was an accident. The mirror displayed my face dripping wet looking almost fuzzy, with speckled water droplets dotting over everything. I wondered for a moment, vacantly, why I was there. I looked around and saw how disgustingly charming the room was. The walls were covered in big gaudy roses with fat green-gray leaves. There was a little wooden sign that one would supposedly get from a craft store hung over the toilet. The sign had a cartoony sheep bathing a lamb on it and beneath the picture were the words "Ewe are welcome to our baaathroom." I couldn't help but shudder. Any child growing up here would've been destined for doilies and never used china.
I heard some movement downstairs and something broke. The brisk shattering sound made me jump. I was reminded suddenly why I was there. I sighed and grabbed for a pastel pink towel. I paused as I noticed it had a flower design elaborately stitched into it. I shook my head.
"Do these people eva get tired of bein' lame?" I asked no one and wiped the water dripping from my face.
When I got to the edge of the kitchen, she was sitting on the floor picking up pieces of a shattered plate. I didn't want to cross onto the off-white tile. It was perfectly spaced apart with white lines racing in between each one. She looked up at me with a regretful, sullen expression that articulated to me more than apologies for breaking a dish. More than just that.
"I'm sorry, it slipped. Did you find the bathroom all right?" She asked and dumped the tiny fragments into the petite blue trash bin under the kitchen sink. Briefly she reminded me of an old time fifties, mother. Her dress cupped gently around her shins as she leaned forward to dust the pieces into the garbage.
"Yeah." I said casually leaning against the wooden doorframe, "I found it all right." She suddenly looked up at me and smiled.
"Oh, that's good. If you'll go into the living room I'll be with you in a moment. I'll bring you some lemonade." She nodded toward the living room. I shrugged and walked into it flopping down on the couch. It was overstuffed, white but strangely comfortable. Everything was engulfed in rose and tulip patterns. The pastels almost smothered me in their vertical lines of silent platitudes. When I first arrived there I tried to touch one of the flowers only if to just see if someone would really have wallpaper that stupid. It was real, and so were the black streaks my unwashed fingers had left across them.
I glanced to the kitchen to see her getting a few glasses from the cabinets. I wondered, vaguely, what it would've been like to live in her house and touch across the cabinets. Feel the smooth carved coldness of each piece of paneled wood. I thought of the tomes of information that must fill her brain on the wheres and whats of the entire house.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect to see you today. I didn't expect to ever see you…actually." She said, and sat across from me on the love seat. The two of us were separated by a small glass coffee table that came up to my shins and was adorned with "Time" and "Parent" magazines with the remotes from the television all in order. I blankly was reminded of that old end table at the Brotherhood house that was rotting away until Freddy backed into it and smashed it into a thousand pieces. The little shards stuck in the ground for weeks no matter how many times Lance vacuumed or complained.
"It's okay, ya know." I found myself responding automatically. "I wouldn't have really expected ya to." I had put up my feet on the couch with me so I was crouching on her sofa, shoes on and all. So it was rude. She abandoned a baby, I could be rude. Fair is fair, I thought.
She didn't seem offended and spoke softly; her eyes were a familiar haunting brown that resounded a hidden hurt I also recognized. "What…brings you to finally find me?" It seemed so hard for her to speak, "I mean…so many years…I didn't think you were coming."
My words were forced, my face held no emotion, "I was curious, ya know? I had ta find out." I felt sort of sick saying the words. I had said the same sentence to people all over this stupid little road trip we'd been taking. I glanced subconsciously back toward the white laced covered windows. I could barely make out the greenish jeep purring on the side of the street and Lance still waiting there, chewing on a toothpick or sucking on a cig, I couldn't tell which.
We'd been traveling for weeks, the two of us, over the summer. I remembered sitting at a rest stop in Nevada. Outside of a McDonald's with the hot, dry Nevada sun re-warming our burgers. Lance was squinting as the cars flew by flickering bright white sunlight into our eyes. Lance was quiet. There are two things Lance can be: loud mouthed or tight lipped. He's known for both. He was choosing the latter at the time and I was thankful.
I shook my head out of the reverie, she had said something. The clock on the wall was ticking threateningly in our silence. I cleared my throat, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said you can call me, Juliet. You don't have to call me, Mrs. Helen." Juliet's smile was weak and constantly apologetic as she nervously fingered the cross on her necklace.
"Oh right." She didn't seem like all the other Mrs. Helen's we'd met. Their first questions usually consisted of, "who are you?", "what do you want?", and "do your new foster parents have any money?" We'd come to her door and Juliet had put her hands over her mouth and prayed.
"How old are you, now?" She took a sip of her lemonade and I stared into the depths of my own swallowing the lie I was about to speak.
"Eighteen I'd…uh…I'd have ta be if I was gonna find you, yo." I looked at her. Her eyes stared into my own and she broke into a thin smile and nodded.
"How have they been treating you?"
I didn't know who she meant by "they." My parents? My school? My friends? I glanced back again towards where Lance was. His form hadn't moved from the jeep and I considered that he probably hadn't moved from the position he'd gotten into since I left him to walk inside the house.
"All right. I've been doin' okay by me, if that's what you mean." I was uncomfortable. The place was too nice, too homey. The walls didn't seem like they were rotting away and filled with lies. It reeked of fresh baked cookies and crayons; I didn't like it at all.
"You look…you look nothing like me." She laughed nervously. I couldn't help but grin. Her hair was black and long and dark, her eyes weren't a cold, sleepless yellow. Pietro sometimes said I must've come from "the village of the dammed." This usually incited some comment from me about his albino paleness. This would then, somehow inspire a full-out Brotherhood brawl between him and me and Freddy, who would usually join out of boredom, and he'd usually win too. Lance rarely joined, he usually looked back at us, smile and strum his guitar.
I didn't know how to respond to her comment. I picked up my lemonade offhandedly and shrugged. Juliet looked away, around her own living room and glanced back to me.
"You probably have a lot of questions for me."
"Yeah, I do." I knew this part of the routine, finding out if she was really the right woman. "First off, when is ma birthday?" I folded my arms behind my head.
"Christmas day." Juliet looked down with a grim little smile on her face. I cocked an eyebrow. Usually, the Mrs. Helen's we met had answered differently, whatever baby they had had and gave up was born on a different day. That's usually when the interrogation ended. I sat up a little.
"Uh yeah." I didn't really know what else to say to that.
"It was snowing." She was beginning, staring at the portrait of a small child I assumed to be her new son, "We were on our way to the hospital, your grandfather and I. We had to go so slow. It was a blizzard." She shook her head, "You were born right there in the car. We drove you to the hospital after that, as quickly as we could." I nodded unsure of what to say or do.
Last Christmas, the one we'd just had, the furnace had broke and we were all bundled up. We could see our breaths as thick clouds in front of us even inside the house. It snowed thickly outside as sheets of ice fell from the top of the roof crashing to the ground in random intervals throughout the day. The pouring light came in through the windows lighting over those freezing, hard floors.
The Christmas celebration was more or less a birthday and Christmas celebration, and the Christmas part was mostly for Freddy considering I was brought up Jewish and so was Pietro, and Lance was an atheist. I found that all rather ironic. The walls creaked and howled with the wind. I remember how that night we all sat around the table, playing cards, Lance was drinking and Pietro was cheating and Freddy was eating and I was watching the dusty light bulb flicker above me. Lance crossed his arms and looked across at me and then over to Freddy.
"Hey, Freddy, your turn." His dark brown eyes were steely emotionless, which either meant he had once jaw-droppingly fantastic hand or the crummiest hand ever imagined. Freddy leaned back and opted for another card, throwing down one unwanted card from his hand. I was the non-participating dealer since I suck at cards and in a game like "strip poker" I figure I had a LOT to lose. I tossed him back a card face down. His giant hand covered over the card sliding it toward him dramatically. Pietro's fingers kept a steady beat as he drummed them on the table with impatience. Freddy's face brightened up with excitement. My eyes darted over to Pietro whose worried expression proved to us that he obviously had no poker face. He cursed and threw down his hand, the cards scattering.
"I fold." He looked over at Lance who was all ready one glove down from the previous round. Lance's face was frozen in a tight expression and he tossed his cards down.
"Fold." He said. I wasn't sure if he did this because his hand was awful, or just to do us the mercy of not seeing Freddy take off his overalls. Freddy laughed so loud the table shook and showed his proud pair of twos. Pietro slapped his forehead nearly casting himself into the cabinets. Freddy was still guffawing and Lance took off his other glove.
Juliet cocked her head at me, and the clock ticked sadly behind us. It must've been four or five in the afternoon and the hot Arizona sun must've been frying the pavement outside. The house's air conditioner was humming softly behind me and I fingered over the lemonade glass in my hand; the condensation fascinating me.
"So, uh, anyway," I started again, less confident that this was going to be as easy as getting in and out in under an hour, "do ya know what ma blood type is?" I was leaning forward now; my legs were crossed Indian style, the tattered bottoms of my jeans dusted across the tops of my worn tennis shoes.
"O negative…the same as your father's." Juliet rushed her hand through her hair in a nervous fashion while saying so. I sat up straight. Right again. My eyes darted back once again to Lance, sitting patiently in the jeep. Juliet looked with me leaning forward a little and letting the charm on her necklace dangle in front of her collar bone. "You can invite him in, you know. He doesn't have to wait out there in the heat. It's okay."
Lance insisted on waiting in the car. He wouldn't even drive the few miles down the road to the Starbucks. Not even just for twenty minutes. He always was sitting outside the apartment building, the house, the condo, or whatever. The heat and sun roasting him over like it was challenging him. Lance always sat there clutching the burning black steering wheel. I could tell when he thought I might have been getting close to "mother" because he'd start smoking.
I never minded it when he smoked around me because I was comfortable with it. He'd quit once before he even joined the Brotherhood, but when he was really nervous he'd start chain-smoking real bad. Pietro would crinkle his nose and persist Lance go outside if he was going to be nervous. Apparently the speed demon didn't need anything near him that could possibly slow him down. But Lance wasn't like me, I would've told Pietro to deal with it. Lance would just shrug and wander off outside and smoke by a tree until all the red embers had died and fallen, disappearing into the grass. If he was nervous enough, he'd strike up another one repeating the cycle until his was the only light burning in the night. Or until his fears were gone.
There was one time when I needed to take some pictures for my photography class. Some ridiculous school project I wouldn't have bothered doing if it weren't for the fact the subject had interested me at least a little, even if I had no idea what to take a picture of. Lance was stressing for one reason or another. His hands would rush through his hair and he kept putting a hand to his mouth as if he were half-expecting to find a cigarette already dangling from his lips. We both needed to get out so he took me out in his jeep and dragged me to the outskirts of Bayville.
Nobody travels out there much since most of it is closed down. There was a train station that carried people through the town, back about thirty or fifty years ago. But the station had burned to the ground. Everything there was now rusted, infected, and dangerous. But the tracks were still there. Planks of wood rotting away between the rusting metal spikes and softened gravel.
Along the train tracks was this abandoned drive-in. The sign had been taken down and so had the projectionist booths and everything but these two big, white, empty screens that hovered above, alien to the overgrown grass and rust that ensnared the grounds.
The day was perfect for it. Overcast so the sun wouldn't destroy the shots but still bright enough to get some decent light. I was snapping shots of the looming white screens with the wind blowing my hair back. The place smelled old and used. It smelt like freedom. I smiled ruefully at the small holes poked through the screens by time or vandalism. My feet crunched over the broken remains of beer bottles and rusty pipes. The place reminded me of the Brotherhood. Abandoned, unkempt, showing no hope or promise to be anything but a possible danger. And I thought I might mention this to Lance, I turned back to him, but he seemed to be lamenting over a bent and twisted street sign. A cigarette was dangling carelessly from his mouth, the smoke curling and rising to the already bleak skies. I took a picture.
"He'll be fine." I found myself responding. I wasn't sure if I was answering Juliet's invitation or if I was talking to the image in my mind. Juliet nodded.
"You seem distracted." She stated. And this annoyed me. As if she had any right to say that to me. As if she'd know me my whole life and it was an everyday comment. Like she had any right to pretend she knew me. To pretend that she wasn't going to hell for abandoning her child. I snorted and turned my head. Then I looked at her, angrily.
"Why'd ya leave me, Mom? Why'd you leave me to die, Mom?" I spat frigidly. I wanted her to hurt. The question caught her off-guard, obviously. Juliet's eyes sparked this horrid fear and shock. She licked her lips and turned her head, she whispered something, pained. "What was that?" I sharply questioned.
"I didn't leave you." Juliet seemed to be on the brink of tears. But I was more hurt at the fact that I didn't really care. She wasn't my mother. I was almost surprised at my own cold-heartedness. I settled back against the overstuffed couch.
She took a sip from her lemonade and put it back on the smooth, clear, surface of the coffee table. The light pooled over it as dust specks danced. My hands were fiddling with the torn part of my jeans, rubbing over my knees.
"Then what DID happen?" I asked. Juliet looked at me and shifted.
"Well…I was very young when I had you, too young to really support you." She glanced out the window and then back to me again. "I wanted to keep you, I really did. My parents wouldn't let me. They said I needed to finish high school. They wanted me to have a life and I wanted you to have one too. So I put you in foster care. I hoped that you would have a better life. I hope I was right." Juliet smiled at me. All I could think of how wrong everything had turned out.
"How old were you?" I felt myself say it. I was so unfeeling.
"I was fourteen."
"Whoa! You were YOUNG." I blanched. I couldn't help it.
"I know." She smiled weakly. I tried to regain my composure and leaned back against the seat.
"So who was mah dad? Did he stick around?"
"You're so calm about all this." She noted solemnly playing with the little cross on her necklace. I shrugged, she continued, "Well, he was…he was a decent man. He was quite a bit older." Juliet paused, she seemed humiliated, "He was…very much in the public eye and he didn't want it to get out that he and I had had…relations."
"What'd he do?"
"He was in politics. He's a senator now." Juliet's hand was vacantly sliding over her floral print dress. It smoothed out the wrinkles that weren't there. I thought about it for a moment and then looked to the clock. Lance must've been sitting in that jeep for hours, I bet he still hadn't moved. Juliet was staring remorsefully at her hands and massaged her fingers carefully. I felt nothing for her. I wanted to push myself to feel something, anything, just so that I could say my heart hadn't frozen over.
But she sat there and I just thought, "You should've tried harder." I must've said it out loud because Juliet looked up and stared at me. I thought of how much this should've killed me. The stare was so distant and shocked, like she couldn't believe that she was looking at this monster. I'd seen the look before.
It was back in May and the four of us, Freddy, Lance, Pietro and I had called "skips" from school. We were lounging around the house. The day was bright but cool, too cold to go to the beach and we decided against the amusement park because of Lance's horridly weak stomach. I was laying upside-down on the couch flipping through the channels. Every time I shifted, even slightly, the couch would groan and squeal beneath me.
Pietro was testing his patience by building a house of cards at super speed and seeing if he could keep his own wind from knocking them down. Every now and then a shower of red and black would swirl with his blurring white hands. They darted in and out of the sunlight like dove's wings as he sat there reconstructing and deconstructing the flimsy house. Watching him was actually more entertaining than the television.
The front door crashed open as Freddy burst through yelling, "Guys! Come quick, hurry!" I fell the short drop off the couch and to the floor, somersaulting over myself and scrambling to my feet. Of course at the word "quick" Pietro was all ready speeding past him to the outside. Lance, who must've hear him from upstairs, was taking the steps three at a time, Freddy made it sound like someone had had their head blown clean off in the front yard.
Freddy was speaking at a velocity that really only Pietro could possibly understand. I hopped along after them while Lance stumbled behind, he'd probably been asleep. I think Pietro must've caught the gist of what Freddy said because then he stopped a little and followed after repeating:
"Well where is it? Where is it?"
"Where is WHAT?" I finally yelled and Freddy turned to me pointing a large finger at the ground. His blue eyes were frightened and worried something I hadn't thought I'd ever seen in his eyes. I followed his finger to a small brown mess of feathers lying in the browning grass. It was a small, russet sparrow curled at the base of a tree trunk in our front yard. It was lying on its side flapping its wing violently, its head was tilted back and its mouth was open, tongue worming wildly up toward the sky.
My first reaction was sincerity and pity for it. My next, I'm ashamed to admit, was apathy. I looked at it through the corner of my eye and shrugged my shoulders up.
"Things die." I found myself saying and turning away. Freddy obviously didn't hear me as he was babbling on.
"…and this big cat just leapt on him and started ripping at his wing and it was screechin' and screechin' and it's just this little baby and now it's gonna die and it's just so small and its still hurt and you gotta stop it."
Pietro, to my surprise had knelt by it, and was gently touching its feathers.
"Freddy, we really can't do anything for it." Pietro was still stroking the bird's back as its head was twisted upwards, opening and closing its mouth and soulless black eyes. Freddy ripped Pietro from off the ground and held him up by the shirt with one giant hand. Pietro's eyes widened and his slender hands latched onto Freddy's oversized ones in an attempt to pry them away.
"You can run it to an animal hospital fast enough, speedy!" Freddy's eyes held that same childish fright and worry now tinged with rage. I hurried over and tried to separate them.
"Yo Freddy, calm down!" I latched onto his arm trying to force him away from the struggling speedster.
"Yeah! Chill out I was just saying—"
"I know what you were saying and I think you better be changing your mind."
"Freddy quit it!"
"I'm not gonna until he gets it to a hospital!"
"Put me down! Putmedownputmedownputmedownputmedownputme--"
SNAP
The three of us stopped arguing and turned out heads to where the sound resonated from. Crouching by the tree, in the dark and speckled shade, was Lance's hunched form his hands clasped together. He slowly uncovered his left hand to show the crumpled, lifeless body of the bird. There was still blood trickling from the inside of the bird's beak. We stared at him as his eyes were shaded by his long bangs.
It didn't take long for Freddy to drop Pietro and slam Lance against the rough trunk of the tree. I stepped back hoping to stay out of harm's way.
"You killed it! You MURDERED it! We could've saved something for once but you destroyed it. You killed it!" Freddy's hands gripped tightly against Lance's shoulders crushing them back. Lance's expression was determined with a flicker of pity.
"It was DYING, Freddy. Even if we GOT it to a vet's it would've been too late. It was on its way out, I could've let it die slowly trying to give YOU some sense of righteousness in the world; or I could've given it a quick and practically painless death. What would YOU have rather had?" Lance snarled, defensively. Pietro had picked up the dead bird and looked at Freddy with his serene, blue eyes.
"Look, Blob, it's not coming back. If you really want we can throw it a decent funeral. There was nothing we could do for it then and nothing we can do for it now." Pietro shifted his weight waiting, impatiently, for Freddy's response. But Freddy's eyes were glued in front of him. His eyes were so rough and shocked, like he couldn't believe that he was looking at this monster. Lance's glare was merciless.
I got up suddenly. I had woken from my trance and I didn't think I needed to hear anything else. I could tell Juliet's simple story. She got rid of her baby because she couldn't take care of it. She had a new family now. At least I'd have something to tell.
"Thanks for your time, I should get going." The words were emotionless, automatic. I felt frozen.
"There's one more thing." Juliet stood up; her skirt flowed around her as she approached me.
"Yeah, what?" I stepped back subconsciously and she stopped where she was. Her eyes had taken on a familiar coldness in they're deep sienna depths.
"When you, my son, were very small I took care of you. You stayed with me till you were a little over a year old. I took very good care of you, mostly. I'm ashamed to admit that there was one time that I wasn't that good of a care taker. While I was making dinner for myself and your grandmother and grandfather you had started crying and I picked you up and went to check on the sauce. I'd…I'd left my necklace near the burner and since it was metal it heated up quickly. You were just a baby and you were curious and you stuck your little palm to it. The doctor said it would scar." She said.
I found myself putting my hands in my pockets, and looking off nervously.
"I know. I all ready saw your hands." She reached over and picked up my barley drunk glass of lemonade. "You are not my son." Juliet looked straight into my eyes when she said it. They must've been what mine had looked like, heartless, uncaring. "You can go if you'd like, thank you for stopping by anyway, young man."
I shrugged, trying to seem casual, and started toward the door, feeling humiliated. Caught in the act. I looked back at her at her fringe and frills house as she walked into her chipper kitchen. My eyes blanketed across the white-laced curtains, the picture of the little boy on the mantle, the blooming pink flowers across the wall and my black streaked handprints across them. Then I turned away.
Lance must've gone through a whole pack before I got to the car. When he spoke, his voice was shaky and hoarse, like these were the first words he said all day.
"Was it her?" He asked. The smoke was curling up towards the hot Arizona sun. His forehead was dabbed with sweat, probably from being out in the heat all day. He'd taken off his gloves and was now gripping the steering wheel in anticipation. His fingers were white.
I opened my mouth to speak. I started to form the word with my lips. But I saw his dark, messy, unkempt hair. I saw the dirt on his fingers, blackening them, like mine. I thought of that house with the pastel towels, fresh-baked cookies, crayons, innocence. I mused that it wasn't a place for broken, dirty things. It never was; it never would be.
"No." I stated, climbing into the overheated passenger's seat. As I started fastening my seatbelt I looked at Mrs. Helen standing at the doorway. Her hands rested against the doorframe and her long black hair moved as she leaned closer to it. Her dress brushed along her calves gently as her fingers turned white clutching the doorframe. I shot back to look at Lance.
He was starring at her, eyes unwavering. I looked back to Juliet. She was looking at him, expressionless. They said nothing. Lance started up the jeep. He shifted the car into drive and brought his right hand up to wipe the sweat off his forehead with the back of his palm.
I was suddenly brought back to that Christmas Eve where we were all playing strip poker. There was Lance, folding, but I wasn't paying attention. I planned on bailing the game when shirts started coming off.
"What's that?" Pietro said. I looked up and Pietro was leaning curiously over the table.
"What's what?" Lance had asked apathetically. In a blur Pietro was at the other side of the table, cards flying after him. Pietro grabbed Lance's hand and bent Lance's fingers downward, arching his palm. "Ow! WATCH IT!"
There, Lance the atheist, had a thick clear mark on his hand. A deep redish white color blazed into his palm. It was a cross. Pietro arched an eyebrow as Lance tugged his hand back defensively.
"Looks like a burn." Freddy supplied.
"Why would anyone eva have a cross burned inta their hand, yo? Especially an atheist." I commented setting my feet on the table.
"Don't ask me." Lance snapped, "It's been there for as long as I can remember."
"Yeah," Pietro snickered before getting back into his seat, "don't ask him anything like that. I mean, tomorrow's his birthday and we wouldn't want to ruin it by having him THINK." He mocked.
"Are we gonna play or WHAT?" The house shook, as Lance's tone turned deadly. Pietro backed down and gave a sheepish grin.
"Sure, sure. Set 'em up Todd, we'll play again."
Hideaway
By: ThatGirl
I flicked my head up and the water sprayed the glass in front of me. It was an accident. The mirror displayed my face dripping wet looking almost fuzzy, with speckled water droplets dotting over everything. I wondered for a moment, vacantly, why I was there. I looked around and saw how disgustingly charming the room was. The walls were covered in big gaudy roses with fat green-gray leaves. There was a little wooden sign that one would supposedly get from a craft store hung over the toilet. The sign had a cartoony sheep bathing a lamb on it and beneath the picture were the words "Ewe are welcome to our baaathroom." I couldn't help but shudder. Any child growing up here would've been destined for doilies and never used china.
I heard some movement downstairs and something broke. The brisk shattering sound made me jump. I was reminded suddenly why I was there. I sighed and grabbed for a pastel pink towel. I paused as I noticed it had a flower design elaborately stitched into it. I shook my head.
"Do these people eva get tired of bein' lame?" I asked no one and wiped the water dripping from my face.
When I got to the edge of the kitchen, she was sitting on the floor picking up pieces of a shattered plate. I didn't want to cross onto the off-white tile. It was perfectly spaced apart with white lines racing in between each one. She looked up at me with a regretful, sullen expression that articulated to me more than apologies for breaking a dish. More than just that.
"I'm sorry, it slipped. Did you find the bathroom all right?" She asked and dumped the tiny fragments into the petite blue trash bin under the kitchen sink. Briefly she reminded me of an old time fifties, mother. Her dress cupped gently around her shins as she leaned forward to dust the pieces into the garbage.
"Yeah." I said casually leaning against the wooden doorframe, "I found it all right." She suddenly looked up at me and smiled.
"Oh, that's good. If you'll go into the living room I'll be with you in a moment. I'll bring you some lemonade." She nodded toward the living room. I shrugged and walked into it flopping down on the couch. It was overstuffed, white but strangely comfortable. Everything was engulfed in rose and tulip patterns. The pastels almost smothered me in their vertical lines of silent platitudes. When I first arrived there I tried to touch one of the flowers only if to just see if someone would really have wallpaper that stupid. It was real, and so were the black streaks my unwashed fingers had left across them.
I glanced to the kitchen to see her getting a few glasses from the cabinets. I wondered, vaguely, what it would've been like to live in her house and touch across the cabinets. Feel the smooth carved coldness of each piece of paneled wood. I thought of the tomes of information that must fill her brain on the wheres and whats of the entire house.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect to see you today. I didn't expect to ever see you…actually." She said, and sat across from me on the love seat. The two of us were separated by a small glass coffee table that came up to my shins and was adorned with "Time" and "Parent" magazines with the remotes from the television all in order. I blankly was reminded of that old end table at the Brotherhood house that was rotting away until Freddy backed into it and smashed it into a thousand pieces. The little shards stuck in the ground for weeks no matter how many times Lance vacuumed or complained.
"It's okay, ya know." I found myself responding automatically. "I wouldn't have really expected ya to." I had put up my feet on the couch with me so I was crouching on her sofa, shoes on and all. So it was rude. She abandoned a baby, I could be rude. Fair is fair, I thought.
She didn't seem offended and spoke softly; her eyes were a familiar haunting brown that resounded a hidden hurt I also recognized. "What…brings you to finally find me?" It seemed so hard for her to speak, "I mean…so many years…I didn't think you were coming."
My words were forced, my face held no emotion, "I was curious, ya know? I had ta find out." I felt sort of sick saying the words. I had said the same sentence to people all over this stupid little road trip we'd been taking. I glanced subconsciously back toward the white laced covered windows. I could barely make out the greenish jeep purring on the side of the street and Lance still waiting there, chewing on a toothpick or sucking on a cig, I couldn't tell which.
We'd been traveling for weeks, the two of us, over the summer. I remembered sitting at a rest stop in Nevada. Outside of a McDonald's with the hot, dry Nevada sun re-warming our burgers. Lance was squinting as the cars flew by flickering bright white sunlight into our eyes. Lance was quiet. There are two things Lance can be: loud mouthed or tight lipped. He's known for both. He was choosing the latter at the time and I was thankful.
I shook my head out of the reverie, she had said something. The clock on the wall was ticking threateningly in our silence. I cleared my throat, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said you can call me, Juliet. You don't have to call me, Mrs. Helen." Juliet's smile was weak and constantly apologetic as she nervously fingered the cross on her necklace.
"Oh right." She didn't seem like all the other Mrs. Helen's we'd met. Their first questions usually consisted of, "who are you?", "what do you want?", and "do your new foster parents have any money?" We'd come to her door and Juliet had put her hands over her mouth and prayed.
"How old are you, now?" She took a sip of her lemonade and I stared into the depths of my own swallowing the lie I was about to speak.
"Eighteen I'd…uh…I'd have ta be if I was gonna find you, yo." I looked at her. Her eyes stared into my own and she broke into a thin smile and nodded.
"How have they been treating you?"
I didn't know who she meant by "they." My parents? My school? My friends? I glanced back again towards where Lance was. His form hadn't moved from the jeep and I considered that he probably hadn't moved from the position he'd gotten into since I left him to walk inside the house.
"All right. I've been doin' okay by me, if that's what you mean." I was uncomfortable. The place was too nice, too homey. The walls didn't seem like they were rotting away and filled with lies. It reeked of fresh baked cookies and crayons; I didn't like it at all.
"You look…you look nothing like me." She laughed nervously. I couldn't help but grin. Her hair was black and long and dark, her eyes weren't a cold, sleepless yellow. Pietro sometimes said I must've come from "the village of the dammed." This usually incited some comment from me about his albino paleness. This would then, somehow inspire a full-out Brotherhood brawl between him and me and Freddy, who would usually join out of boredom, and he'd usually win too. Lance rarely joined, he usually looked back at us, smile and strum his guitar.
I didn't know how to respond to her comment. I picked up my lemonade offhandedly and shrugged. Juliet looked away, around her own living room and glanced back to me.
"You probably have a lot of questions for me."
"Yeah, I do." I knew this part of the routine, finding out if she was really the right woman. "First off, when is ma birthday?" I folded my arms behind my head.
"Christmas day." Juliet looked down with a grim little smile on her face. I cocked an eyebrow. Usually, the Mrs. Helen's we met had answered differently, whatever baby they had had and gave up was born on a different day. That's usually when the interrogation ended. I sat up a little.
"Uh yeah." I didn't really know what else to say to that.
"It was snowing." She was beginning, staring at the portrait of a small child I assumed to be her new son, "We were on our way to the hospital, your grandfather and I. We had to go so slow. It was a blizzard." She shook her head, "You were born right there in the car. We drove you to the hospital after that, as quickly as we could." I nodded unsure of what to say or do.
Last Christmas, the one we'd just had, the furnace had broke and we were all bundled up. We could see our breaths as thick clouds in front of us even inside the house. It snowed thickly outside as sheets of ice fell from the top of the roof crashing to the ground in random intervals throughout the day. The pouring light came in through the windows lighting over those freezing, hard floors.
The Christmas celebration was more or less a birthday and Christmas celebration, and the Christmas part was mostly for Freddy considering I was brought up Jewish and so was Pietro, and Lance was an atheist. I found that all rather ironic. The walls creaked and howled with the wind. I remember how that night we all sat around the table, playing cards, Lance was drinking and Pietro was cheating and Freddy was eating and I was watching the dusty light bulb flicker above me. Lance crossed his arms and looked across at me and then over to Freddy.
"Hey, Freddy, your turn." His dark brown eyes were steely emotionless, which either meant he had once jaw-droppingly fantastic hand or the crummiest hand ever imagined. Freddy leaned back and opted for another card, throwing down one unwanted card from his hand. I was the non-participating dealer since I suck at cards and in a game like "strip poker" I figure I had a LOT to lose. I tossed him back a card face down. His giant hand covered over the card sliding it toward him dramatically. Pietro's fingers kept a steady beat as he drummed them on the table with impatience. Freddy's face brightened up with excitement. My eyes darted over to Pietro whose worried expression proved to us that he obviously had no poker face. He cursed and threw down his hand, the cards scattering.
"I fold." He looked over at Lance who was all ready one glove down from the previous round. Lance's face was frozen in a tight expression and he tossed his cards down.
"Fold." He said. I wasn't sure if he did this because his hand was awful, or just to do us the mercy of not seeing Freddy take off his overalls. Freddy laughed so loud the table shook and showed his proud pair of twos. Pietro slapped his forehead nearly casting himself into the cabinets. Freddy was still guffawing and Lance took off his other glove.
Juliet cocked her head at me, and the clock ticked sadly behind us. It must've been four or five in the afternoon and the hot Arizona sun must've been frying the pavement outside. The house's air conditioner was humming softly behind me and I fingered over the lemonade glass in my hand; the condensation fascinating me.
"So, uh, anyway," I started again, less confident that this was going to be as easy as getting in and out in under an hour, "do ya know what ma blood type is?" I was leaning forward now; my legs were crossed Indian style, the tattered bottoms of my jeans dusted across the tops of my worn tennis shoes.
"O negative…the same as your father's." Juliet rushed her hand through her hair in a nervous fashion while saying so. I sat up straight. Right again. My eyes darted back once again to Lance, sitting patiently in the jeep. Juliet looked with me leaning forward a little and letting the charm on her necklace dangle in front of her collar bone. "You can invite him in, you know. He doesn't have to wait out there in the heat. It's okay."
Lance insisted on waiting in the car. He wouldn't even drive the few miles down the road to the Starbucks. Not even just for twenty minutes. He always was sitting outside the apartment building, the house, the condo, or whatever. The heat and sun roasting him over like it was challenging him. Lance always sat there clutching the burning black steering wheel. I could tell when he thought I might have been getting close to "mother" because he'd start smoking.
I never minded it when he smoked around me because I was comfortable with it. He'd quit once before he even joined the Brotherhood, but when he was really nervous he'd start chain-smoking real bad. Pietro would crinkle his nose and persist Lance go outside if he was going to be nervous. Apparently the speed demon didn't need anything near him that could possibly slow him down. But Lance wasn't like me, I would've told Pietro to deal with it. Lance would just shrug and wander off outside and smoke by a tree until all the red embers had died and fallen, disappearing into the grass. If he was nervous enough, he'd strike up another one repeating the cycle until his was the only light burning in the night. Or until his fears were gone.
There was one time when I needed to take some pictures for my photography class. Some ridiculous school project I wouldn't have bothered doing if it weren't for the fact the subject had interested me at least a little, even if I had no idea what to take a picture of. Lance was stressing for one reason or another. His hands would rush through his hair and he kept putting a hand to his mouth as if he were half-expecting to find a cigarette already dangling from his lips. We both needed to get out so he took me out in his jeep and dragged me to the outskirts of Bayville.
Nobody travels out there much since most of it is closed down. There was a train station that carried people through the town, back about thirty or fifty years ago. But the station had burned to the ground. Everything there was now rusted, infected, and dangerous. But the tracks were still there. Planks of wood rotting away between the rusting metal spikes and softened gravel.
Along the train tracks was this abandoned drive-in. The sign had been taken down and so had the projectionist booths and everything but these two big, white, empty screens that hovered above, alien to the overgrown grass and rust that ensnared the grounds.
The day was perfect for it. Overcast so the sun wouldn't destroy the shots but still bright enough to get some decent light. I was snapping shots of the looming white screens with the wind blowing my hair back. The place smelled old and used. It smelt like freedom. I smiled ruefully at the small holes poked through the screens by time or vandalism. My feet crunched over the broken remains of beer bottles and rusty pipes. The place reminded me of the Brotherhood. Abandoned, unkempt, showing no hope or promise to be anything but a possible danger. And I thought I might mention this to Lance, I turned back to him, but he seemed to be lamenting over a bent and twisted street sign. A cigarette was dangling carelessly from his mouth, the smoke curling and rising to the already bleak skies. I took a picture.
"He'll be fine." I found myself responding. I wasn't sure if I was answering Juliet's invitation or if I was talking to the image in my mind. Juliet nodded.
"You seem distracted." She stated. And this annoyed me. As if she had any right to say that to me. As if she'd know me my whole life and it was an everyday comment. Like she had any right to pretend she knew me. To pretend that she wasn't going to hell for abandoning her child. I snorted and turned my head. Then I looked at her, angrily.
"Why'd ya leave me, Mom? Why'd you leave me to die, Mom?" I spat frigidly. I wanted her to hurt. The question caught her off-guard, obviously. Juliet's eyes sparked this horrid fear and shock. She licked her lips and turned her head, she whispered something, pained. "What was that?" I sharply questioned.
"I didn't leave you." Juliet seemed to be on the brink of tears. But I was more hurt at the fact that I didn't really care. She wasn't my mother. I was almost surprised at my own cold-heartedness. I settled back against the overstuffed couch.
She took a sip from her lemonade and put it back on the smooth, clear, surface of the coffee table. The light pooled over it as dust specks danced. My hands were fiddling with the torn part of my jeans, rubbing over my knees.
"Then what DID happen?" I asked. Juliet looked at me and shifted.
"Well…I was very young when I had you, too young to really support you." She glanced out the window and then back to me again. "I wanted to keep you, I really did. My parents wouldn't let me. They said I needed to finish high school. They wanted me to have a life and I wanted you to have one too. So I put you in foster care. I hoped that you would have a better life. I hope I was right." Juliet smiled at me. All I could think of how wrong everything had turned out.
"How old were you?" I felt myself say it. I was so unfeeling.
"I was fourteen."
"Whoa! You were YOUNG." I blanched. I couldn't help it.
"I know." She smiled weakly. I tried to regain my composure and leaned back against the seat.
"So who was mah dad? Did he stick around?"
"You're so calm about all this." She noted solemnly playing with the little cross on her necklace. I shrugged, she continued, "Well, he was…he was a decent man. He was quite a bit older." Juliet paused, she seemed humiliated, "He was…very much in the public eye and he didn't want it to get out that he and I had had…relations."
"What'd he do?"
"He was in politics. He's a senator now." Juliet's hand was vacantly sliding over her floral print dress. It smoothed out the wrinkles that weren't there. I thought about it for a moment and then looked to the clock. Lance must've been sitting in that jeep for hours, I bet he still hadn't moved. Juliet was staring remorsefully at her hands and massaged her fingers carefully. I felt nothing for her. I wanted to push myself to feel something, anything, just so that I could say my heart hadn't frozen over.
But she sat there and I just thought, "You should've tried harder." I must've said it out loud because Juliet looked up and stared at me. I thought of how much this should've killed me. The stare was so distant and shocked, like she couldn't believe that she was looking at this monster. I'd seen the look before.
It was back in May and the four of us, Freddy, Lance, Pietro and I had called "skips" from school. We were lounging around the house. The day was bright but cool, too cold to go to the beach and we decided against the amusement park because of Lance's horridly weak stomach. I was laying upside-down on the couch flipping through the channels. Every time I shifted, even slightly, the couch would groan and squeal beneath me.
Pietro was testing his patience by building a house of cards at super speed and seeing if he could keep his own wind from knocking them down. Every now and then a shower of red and black would swirl with his blurring white hands. They darted in and out of the sunlight like dove's wings as he sat there reconstructing and deconstructing the flimsy house. Watching him was actually more entertaining than the television.
The front door crashed open as Freddy burst through yelling, "Guys! Come quick, hurry!" I fell the short drop off the couch and to the floor, somersaulting over myself and scrambling to my feet. Of course at the word "quick" Pietro was all ready speeding past him to the outside. Lance, who must've hear him from upstairs, was taking the steps three at a time, Freddy made it sound like someone had had their head blown clean off in the front yard.
Freddy was speaking at a velocity that really only Pietro could possibly understand. I hopped along after them while Lance stumbled behind, he'd probably been asleep. I think Pietro must've caught the gist of what Freddy said because then he stopped a little and followed after repeating:
"Well where is it? Where is it?"
"Where is WHAT?" I finally yelled and Freddy turned to me pointing a large finger at the ground. His blue eyes were frightened and worried something I hadn't thought I'd ever seen in his eyes. I followed his finger to a small brown mess of feathers lying in the browning grass. It was a small, russet sparrow curled at the base of a tree trunk in our front yard. It was lying on its side flapping its wing violently, its head was tilted back and its mouth was open, tongue worming wildly up toward the sky.
My first reaction was sincerity and pity for it. My next, I'm ashamed to admit, was apathy. I looked at it through the corner of my eye and shrugged my shoulders up.
"Things die." I found myself saying and turning away. Freddy obviously didn't hear me as he was babbling on.
"…and this big cat just leapt on him and started ripping at his wing and it was screechin' and screechin' and it's just this little baby and now it's gonna die and it's just so small and its still hurt and you gotta stop it."
Pietro, to my surprise had knelt by it, and was gently touching its feathers.
"Freddy, we really can't do anything for it." Pietro was still stroking the bird's back as its head was twisted upwards, opening and closing its mouth and soulless black eyes. Freddy ripped Pietro from off the ground and held him up by the shirt with one giant hand. Pietro's eyes widened and his slender hands latched onto Freddy's oversized ones in an attempt to pry them away.
"You can run it to an animal hospital fast enough, speedy!" Freddy's eyes held that same childish fright and worry now tinged with rage. I hurried over and tried to separate them.
"Yo Freddy, calm down!" I latched onto his arm trying to force him away from the struggling speedster.
"Yeah! Chill out I was just saying—"
"I know what you were saying and I think you better be changing your mind."
"Freddy quit it!"
"I'm not gonna until he gets it to a hospital!"
"Put me down! Putmedownputmedownputmedownputmedownputme--"
SNAP
The three of us stopped arguing and turned out heads to where the sound resonated from. Crouching by the tree, in the dark and speckled shade, was Lance's hunched form his hands clasped together. He slowly uncovered his left hand to show the crumpled, lifeless body of the bird. There was still blood trickling from the inside of the bird's beak. We stared at him as his eyes were shaded by his long bangs.
It didn't take long for Freddy to drop Pietro and slam Lance against the rough trunk of the tree. I stepped back hoping to stay out of harm's way.
"You killed it! You MURDERED it! We could've saved something for once but you destroyed it. You killed it!" Freddy's hands gripped tightly against Lance's shoulders crushing them back. Lance's expression was determined with a flicker of pity.
"It was DYING, Freddy. Even if we GOT it to a vet's it would've been too late. It was on its way out, I could've let it die slowly trying to give YOU some sense of righteousness in the world; or I could've given it a quick and practically painless death. What would YOU have rather had?" Lance snarled, defensively. Pietro had picked up the dead bird and looked at Freddy with his serene, blue eyes.
"Look, Blob, it's not coming back. If you really want we can throw it a decent funeral. There was nothing we could do for it then and nothing we can do for it now." Pietro shifted his weight waiting, impatiently, for Freddy's response. But Freddy's eyes were glued in front of him. His eyes were so rough and shocked, like he couldn't believe that he was looking at this monster. Lance's glare was merciless.
I got up suddenly. I had woken from my trance and I didn't think I needed to hear anything else. I could tell Juliet's simple story. She got rid of her baby because she couldn't take care of it. She had a new family now. At least I'd have something to tell.
"Thanks for your time, I should get going." The words were emotionless, automatic. I felt frozen.
"There's one more thing." Juliet stood up; her skirt flowed around her as she approached me.
"Yeah, what?" I stepped back subconsciously and she stopped where she was. Her eyes had taken on a familiar coldness in they're deep sienna depths.
"When you, my son, were very small I took care of you. You stayed with me till you were a little over a year old. I took very good care of you, mostly. I'm ashamed to admit that there was one time that I wasn't that good of a care taker. While I was making dinner for myself and your grandmother and grandfather you had started crying and I picked you up and went to check on the sauce. I'd…I'd left my necklace near the burner and since it was metal it heated up quickly. You were just a baby and you were curious and you stuck your little palm to it. The doctor said it would scar." She said.
I found myself putting my hands in my pockets, and looking off nervously.
"I know. I all ready saw your hands." She reached over and picked up my barley drunk glass of lemonade. "You are not my son." Juliet looked straight into my eyes when she said it. They must've been what mine had looked like, heartless, uncaring. "You can go if you'd like, thank you for stopping by anyway, young man."
I shrugged, trying to seem casual, and started toward the door, feeling humiliated. Caught in the act. I looked back at her at her fringe and frills house as she walked into her chipper kitchen. My eyes blanketed across the white-laced curtains, the picture of the little boy on the mantle, the blooming pink flowers across the wall and my black streaked handprints across them. Then I turned away.
Lance must've gone through a whole pack before I got to the car. When he spoke, his voice was shaky and hoarse, like these were the first words he said all day.
"Was it her?" He asked. The smoke was curling up towards the hot Arizona sun. His forehead was dabbed with sweat, probably from being out in the heat all day. He'd taken off his gloves and was now gripping the steering wheel in anticipation. His fingers were white.
I opened my mouth to speak. I started to form the word with my lips. But I saw his dark, messy, unkempt hair. I saw the dirt on his fingers, blackening them, like mine. I thought of that house with the pastel towels, fresh-baked cookies, crayons, innocence. I mused that it wasn't a place for broken, dirty things. It never was; it never would be.
"No." I stated, climbing into the overheated passenger's seat. As I started fastening my seatbelt I looked at Mrs. Helen standing at the doorway. Her hands rested against the doorframe and her long black hair moved as she leaned closer to it. Her dress brushed along her calves gently as her fingers turned white clutching the doorframe. I shot back to look at Lance.
He was starring at her, eyes unwavering. I looked back to Juliet. She was looking at him, expressionless. They said nothing. Lance started up the jeep. He shifted the car into drive and brought his right hand up to wipe the sweat off his forehead with the back of his palm.
I was suddenly brought back to that Christmas Eve where we were all playing strip poker. There was Lance, folding, but I wasn't paying attention. I planned on bailing the game when shirts started coming off.
"What's that?" Pietro said. I looked up and Pietro was leaning curiously over the table.
"What's what?" Lance had asked apathetically. In a blur Pietro was at the other side of the table, cards flying after him. Pietro grabbed Lance's hand and bent Lance's fingers downward, arching his palm. "Ow! WATCH IT!"
There, Lance the atheist, had a thick clear mark on his hand. A deep redish white color blazed into his palm. It was a cross. Pietro arched an eyebrow as Lance tugged his hand back defensively.
"Looks like a burn." Freddy supplied.
"Why would anyone eva have a cross burned inta their hand, yo? Especially an atheist." I commented setting my feet on the table.
"Don't ask me." Lance snapped, "It's been there for as long as I can remember."
"Yeah," Pietro snickered before getting back into his seat, "don't ask him anything like that. I mean, tomorrow's his birthday and we wouldn't want to ruin it by having him THINK." He mocked.
"Are we gonna play or WHAT?" The house shook, as Lance's tone turned deadly. Pietro backed down and gave a sheepish grin.
"Sure, sure. Set 'em up Todd, we'll play again."