Disclaimer: Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters © Dan Ayrkroyd, Harold Ramis and Fil Barlow. Eden Spengler and Marie Lupin, mentioned in the second chapter, © Fritz Baugh. All other characters are creations of the author.
A/N: These short stories are set in 2020, 2022 and 2025. They feature mostly the author's original characters, with canon characters playing a secondary role. If you don't want to read a story like that, you are advised to stop here.
.-.-.-.
Max
On the night of his sixteenth birthday, Max Miller had a big party attended by all of his friends and closest family. Then the very next morning, he received a letter that began, 'I am your mother.' He took the letter into the bathroom, locked the door and read what this woman had to say. Then he just stood there. He forgot all about life outside the bathroom until someone tapped on the door and his mother's voice - for she was his mother - said, "Max, are you okay in there?"
Max didn't know how to answer. He didn't even think of "I'm fine," until many hours later. She called again: "Max?" She was already beginning to sound worried, and Max knew he would have to do something to appease her. Still not saying anything, he went and pushed the letter under the door. He heard it being picked up, and then her footsteps as she moved away.
Relieved to have got rid of her, Max put down the lid of the toilet seat and sat down to think. He would have liked some quiet, but before very long both of his parents were outside the door saying urgently, "Max? Max?"
It was difficult to know what to say. He couldn't very well answer them when they hadn't actually asked him anything. Then his mother's voice said, "Honey, come out and we'll talk about this."
"No thanks, Mom," said Max. "I'm okay in here."
That seemed to shut them up for a moment. Then he heard hushed voices, his father occasionally speaking a little too loudly, if he didn't want to be overheard. Max caught, "How the hell did she find him?" and, "Is she allowed to do this?"
He thought they might start talking to him again, but thankfully they decided to leave him alone. Max had hoped they would, knowing that it was a distinct possibility. They knew he thought nothing of spending hours in the bathroom if he was feeling confused, and if either of them needed to use the bathroom, they had another one in their nice big ground-floor apartment - it was practically a house. Max knew that, in stark contrast, his biological mother had spent several years of her life squatting in a rundown apartment. He wondered if she was hard-up for bathrooms nowadays.
Time passed. A long time, probably, because his parents grew sufficiently worried to call in reinforcements. Max was jolted out of his trance by a series of extremely loud knocks, followed by a very familiar voice: "Max, it's me, open up!"
He had never disobeyed that voice in his life. Max opened the door and found on the other side the anxious face of his oldest and dearest friend, Rose Rivera. He beckoned her inside. She went, and he shut the door, though he didn't lock it. She'd hate that.
"Hi, Rose," he said. "Did you have a good time at the party?"
"Yes," Rose said dismissively. "Max, you don't have to see her if you don't want to."
"Who?"
"Your… that Jackie woman."
"I know," said Max.
"Why did you lock yourself in the bathroom?"
"Felt like it."
"Oh," said Rose. "Do you… feel like coming out again now?"
"Not really," said Max, and he took his seat on the toilet lid once again. "Do you have anything planned for tonight? I really feel like seeing a movie."
Rose continued to look worried, and he wished she wouldn't. She didn't speak for a moment, but then she said, "All right, I'll go to a movie with you, if you like." Then she sat down on the bathroom floor, and started asking him what he wanted to see. They had a long conversation. They talked about movies, music, people from school, their parents, music again… and then suddenly Max said, "I want to see her."
"Oh!" Rose looked startled. "Right, well… I guess we'd better write back to her."
"We?" said Max.
"Well, I'll help if you want me to."
Max smiled widely at her. "Thanks, Rose, that's really nice of you."
"Shall we get out of this bathroom now?" asked Rose.
"Oh," said Max, "I don't know."
"Why? What's the problem?"
"Well… I can't tell Mom and Dad that I want to meet her."
"Oh Max, I'm sure they'll understand," Rose said gently.
"They'll be hurt."
"They won't."
"They will."
Rose got to her feet, asking, "Would you like me to tell them?"
"No, no, I'll do it," said Max, also standing.
"Would you like me to leave?"
"No, stay. I've missed my run."
"It won't hurt for one day," said Rose.
"I wish I'd remembered," said Max.
He normally went out running with Hawks, the family's pet dog, some mornings and every afternoon. The dog might have been shut away somewhere now that Rose had arrived. When she was little she'd had to be kept separate from the Millers' first dog, Knicks, because she was terrified of him. She had learnt to put up with him after a few years, but since then Knicks had died, Hawks had been taken in and he'd grown almost twice the size of Rose. She didn't mind being in the same room with him when he wasn't being too energetic, but when he was feeling playful, that wasn't good. Being so big, Hawks needed a lot of exercise. Max wondered if he'd been walked at all that day.
Rose took Max's hand and began to lead him out of the bathroom, saying, "Never mind."
Garrett and Jo, Max's parents, were in the living room - she on the sofa, he sitting opposite her in his wheelchair, their heads almost touching. Max approached them, and they both looked up expectantly. He didn't know how long he just stared at them until someone or something - presumably Rose - nudged him in the small of his back.
"Iwannaseer," Max said quickly, as though he was a talking doll and Rose's nudge had triggered his mechanism.
"You want to see her?" asked Garrett, perhaps just for clarity.
Max nodded slowly.
"Well I'm not surprised," Garrett said. "Do you want us to do anything?"
"I, I, I don't know," said Max.
"Let's answer that letter," Rose said briskly. "You can arrange when to meet, and then decide nearer the time whether you want any of us to, to do anything."
"O-okay," said Max. He looked then at Jo, who was staring blankly into space. "Mom?"
She blinked a few times, focused on his face and, at last, smiled. "Yeah, honey?"
"I love you."
He stooped, hugged her tightly and kissed the top of her head. Then he and Rose started composing a response to that letter.
.-.-.-.
Her name was Jackie Wells. It was horribly confusing to Max, because he knew that his name used to be Sanford, and he'd always been told that his birth parents were John and Jackie Sanford. They were drug addicts who let their unwanted baby crawl amongst their used needles. Max had never been told that exactly, but it was what he imagined. At times he thought he remembered both of them, but on reflection he hadn't been able to visualise them before seeing Trainspotting, so it seemed likely that all of his memories of his old life were, in actual fact, memories of that movie.
When he saw her, sitting on the park bench where they had arranged to meet, she didn't look anything like he imagined he remembered her. She didn't look like him either. She looked like a bottle blonde in her sixties, although he knew that in reality she wasn't yet forty. She'd had a tough life all right, and Max almost felt guilty for the body he had brought with him. It was like she'd turned up in a rusty second-hand Ford and he in a brand new state-of-the-art Mercedes.
Hawks was with him, panting excitedly, almost certainly hoping for a nice long run. He was going to be disappointed. Max led the dog over to the woman on the bench, and ventured timidly, "Jackie?"
He needn't have asked. It had to be her. No one else in the vicinity looked like a drug addict who had gone cold turkey (well, she said she had). The woman looked up, stared, got to her feet and seemed surprised that she still wasn't as tall as he was. It must have been a shock to her. The last time she had seen him, he was barely two years old.
"Wow," she said. As she looked him up and down, Max noticed that she had blue eyes like his. That was something. "You grew up real good. You work out or something?"
"Er, yeah."
"I heard you got adopted by a couple of health freaks."
"Can we sit down?" asked Max, beginning to feel a little unsteady.
"Sure, sure."
Jackie sat on the bench, and Max mimicked the action. She took no notice of Hawks until he started sniffing her and slobbering all over the knees of her sweat pants. At this she gave him a filthy look, and Max pulled the dog away to his other side.
"Hawks, sit," said Max. But Hawks remained standing, looking at this strange woman over Max's jeans and breathing heavily at her.
Jackie started rummaging around in her shoulder bag, and asked, "Mind if I smoke?"
Max flinched. "Must you?"
She looked at him for a moment, scowled, and then zipped up the bag.
"I spent years looking for you," she said. "I never wanted to give you up. I never gave anybody permission to have you adopted."
"Well that doesn't matter now," said Max.
"You don't bear a grudge," remarked Jackie.
"I don't remember anything about you."
"Yeah, well, you were… how old?"
"Two."
"Really?" said Jackie. "We had you that long?"
"You should quit smoking," said Max. He was scratching Hawks' ears the whole time they talked. "It makes your lungs all full of tar."
Jackie let out a dry laugh - almost a cackle - and said, "My insides can't get much more fucked up than they are already, kiddo."
"Yes they can."
"I quit all that other stuff, kid. But tobacco's legal - you gotta at least let me have that."
"Can't you call me by my name?"
"Yeah?" said Jackie. "You're still Max, then."
"Yes." Like she didn't know. She'd had a signed letter from him.
"Your father decided to call you that. God knows why."
His father. It was a very remote concept. Max felt absolutely nothing, sitting there talking to this woman. It was hard to believe she had actually given birth to him, and the man who had got her pregnant in the first place… he was a million miles away.
"Why did you decide to track me down?" asked Max.
Jackie stared at him for a few moments. Then she said, "Because you're mine. I never said they could take you."
"They're really great," said Max, suddenly jumping back several sentences and, by the look of her, disconcerting Jackie. "They're not freaks - they just look after their bodies. Aren't you glad I ended up with someone who taught me to look after my health?"
Jackie snorted. "It's better than drugs, I guess."
"Yeah, it is."
"I got on a rocky road. It happens."
"Are you still together?"
"Jesus, Max, can't you follow a conversation?" she asked incredulously. "Are you talking about me and your father now?"
"Yes."
"I haven't seen him for years - I've no idea where he is. Still using, as far as I know."
"Don't you want to know how I am?"
"Well," said Jackie, "you seem all right. Physically, at least."
"I'm happy," said Max.
"Lucky you."
"You said in your letter you wanted to know how I was."
"So I did." Jackie sucked in a long breath, and then asked, "How's school?"
"I'm a C student. When I can concentrate."
"Got a girl?"
"I've been out with this girl Nina a couple times. I don't know, though."
"Dump her if you don't like her," said Jackie. "You can have your pick, body like that."
"So what was he like?"
"Oh, for - who?"
"John," said Max. "My father."
"Oh. I don't really remember."
"But you were together for years."
"We were on smack that whole time."
"What about when you were pregnant?"
Jackie said nothing, and it was like a slap in the face to Max. It had never occurred to him before, but now it was obvious. Why assume anything else? He felt sick. He couldn't help looking down at his body, as though he might have a few fingers or even a whole arm missing, and hadn't noticed before. But thankfully, miraculously, he had come out of this woman's body unscathed.
"John was a complete dick," said Jackie. "Look, don't worry about him. He might not even really be your father."
"Oh!" said Max, and he stopped scratching Hawks' ears in his surprise.
"Don't look like that. Does it really matter now?"
"Who else?"
"Oh God." Jackie sighed heavily. "It's probably John."
"Or…?"
"A couple of dealers."
"A couple? So there were two - are you sure?"
"I don't know, Max, I was drugged up to the eyeballs that entire decade."
"Don't I look like any of them?" Max asked urgently. "Come on, look at me."
"Kid, why do you care? You've been calling some other guy Dad for, for…"
"Fourteen years."
"Holy shit," said Jackie. "I really did flush my life down the toilet, didn't I?"
"Yeah," said Max, just as Hawks made a little noise and dropped his head in his lap. The scratching resumed - it was a comforting motion. "You really did."
.-.-.-.
"Look happy," said Max, later that same day. "I want you to, really."
"But, but…" stammered Jo. "Aren't you really disappointed?"
Max was back in his own living room with both of his parents. Rose was there too, listening with an expression of sheer fury on her face.
"No," said Max. "I didn't want to like her. She's not my mom, Mom - you are."
"Then why did you want to meet her?" asked Garrett.
Max shrugged. "Curious. Rosie, don't look so angry, I'm okay."
"You might not have been," said Rose. "What a bitch!"
"I don't want any of you feeling unhappy about this," said Max. "I don't care what she thinks, and I'm never gonna see her again."
He was making a special effort to look relaxed, leaning back on the sofa with his feet on Hawks' tired and sprawled-out body (he had got his run after all). Max was being completely honest about his feelings, but his parents and his best friend were still all staring at him with pity in their eyes.
"We always knew she never cared about me," said Max. "I just wanted to make sure. I wanted… what's that word?"
"Closure?" Rose suggested.
"Yeah. Well, something like that. Can we please just forget about her now?"
They all looked surprised at that. Then Jo said, "Really? You actually want to forget?"
He shrugged again. "I forgot her once already."
"Oh." Jo, in the silence that followed, glanced at the clock. "It's really late, Rose."
"I'll walk you home," said Max, jumping to his feet.
"Okay, thanks," said Rose. "Are you sure, though? If anyone sees you they'll want you to stay and tell them all about today."
"Then I will," said Max. He looked at his parents. "You guys don't mind, do you?"
Garrett and Jo both mumbled their assent. They had said yes to everything lately.
.-.-.-.
They were already in the apartment building where Rose lived with her mother and father and sister, and ascending the stairs, when Rose said, "I can't believe you're not feeling more emotional about this."
"Well, I got a little bit angry," Max confessed. "But not so she'd notice."
Rose shook her head, tight-lipped with fury. "If it was me…"
"Ro, how can you know? I mean, the woman that gave birth to you, she's… I mean, she's up these stairs waiting for you right now. You don't have any other mom."
"Yeah, you're right," said Rose. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," said Max. "Actually she, she did say something that made me feel… I don't know, weird. I didn't want to tell Mom and Dad because it seems…"
"What does it seem?"
They were on Rose's floor now. She walked a little way along the hall, but Max was reluctant to follow. He had in that moment decided to tell her what was on his mind, and he didn't want to be overheard by anybody on the other side of the door to the apartment. He stopped walking, and so did Rose.
"It shouldn't matter," he said. "But she said she wasn't sure who my father was."
"Right," said Rose. "I, um… yeah, why does that matter?"
"I know I never really knew either of my birth parents," said Max. "But I knew kind of who they were, y'know? I knew their names. My mother was Jackie and my father was John. I knew John Sanford was my father for… years, ever since I asked."
"Oh, I see," said Rose. "You just want to know where you came from."
"But it shouldn't matter," Max said again. "It only matters where I am now."
"It's completely natural," Rose insisted. "Like, I only met Mom's mom a couple of times, and she was this completely irresponsible space case who never did any good to any of us - but I'm still curious about her to this day because she's my grandmother. Not that it's at all the same thing, of course."
"No, it is," said Max.
"And it doesn't stop you feeling that way either."
She looked thoughtful, frowning down at her vastly oversized combat boots as though she hoped they would spell out a solution. Max was touched. To most people, Rose presented an indifferent and perhaps even cold front, and wasn't exactly likeable right away. But Max had known her since they were toddlers, and he knew what a big heart her small frame concealed. It was ironic, really. She looked so tiny and fragile, like a doll that would break with the slightest lack of care, but out of the two of them she was the strong one. He found life hard, and she had propped him up and helped him through more times than he could count. And now her priority was to relieve his feeling of rootlessness. He had always known she was beautiful, but as she stood there thinking only of his happiness, she suddenly looked radiant to him.
"I'll stop feeling like this," said Max. "There's nothing to do but wait."
"May I make a suggestion?" asked Rose.
"'Course."
"You could talk to Dawn."
"Talk to Dawn?" Max was strangely surprised by this suggestion. Dawn was just a kid, not yet thirteen, and he never would have thought of talking to her. Now that Rose had suggested it, though, he wanted to. Dawn would empathise with him completely.
"It's just a suggestion," said Rose. "I mean, I know it's not really the same."
"Oh, I want to talk to her, I do!" Max exclaimed. "Oh, Rose… she's so young."
Rose blinked. "So?"
"Well, it's all… you know, emotional and stuff."
"She'll cope," said Rose. "She's lived with it longer than you have."
"But can I do that?" Max demurred. "I mean, can you just call someone up and say, 'I don't know who my father is - can you talk me through it?' Is that manners? I don't even really know her that well," he added dubiously.
"She won't mind," said Rose. "She's a really sweet girl - she'll be happy to help. And you don't have to call her yourself if you think it seems forward. Go through Roland."
"Rose," said Max. "You're a genius. How do you have so many kick-ass ideas?"
"Can you finish walking me home now?" Rose said dryly. "My dad's gonna start thinking I've been raped and murdered and mugged and raped again, or something."
"Ouch," said Max, putting his arm around her to walk the last few yards to her door. He didn't think she'd mind that - he'd done it before.
He refrained from kissing her, though.
.-.-.-.
Dawn Jackson was brought to the Millers' house by her mother, Tara, and her uncle Roland. Roland might have been there because he was concerned about Max's mental wellbeing, or to rescue Garrett if Jo and Tara started encouraging each other to be immature, as sometimes happened when those two got together. It had been a while since the last time, though. Max hadn't seen Dawn since the new year, and it was now nearing the end of July.
She'd already grown. Max knew she was at that age where a kid just grows and grows and grows, but he was surprised anyway. She even had hips and breasts all of a sudden - more than Rose did, and Rose had been sixteen for months. But genetics had as much to do with that as age, of course. Rose's mother was small, whereas Dawn's was large and curvaceous. Dawn resembled Tara a great deal, but the likeness was watered down by the genes of… who knew? Max wondered how she didn't go crazy wanting to know.
No one was saying anything. Max opened his mouth, hoping some appropriate words would just fall out of it, but then Hawks rescued him by charging in and sniffing Roland's crotch. Roland pushed the dog away, and Dawn caught his attention to stop him from pursuing his seduction of her uncle. She got onto her knees - making herself significantly smaller than Hawks - and started rubbing his ears.
"Hey boy," she said, and then she did something no one ever did, in letting Hawks lick her face. Not very many people liked being licked by a tongue that size.
Roland looked disgusted, and said, "Dawn, dogs lick really horrible things, you know."
"Oh, charming," said Dawn. Then she looked up at Max, smiled and said, "Are you okay?"
"We'll be in the kitchen," said Garrett, and promptly disappeared.
Left alone with Max and Hawks by the front door, Dawn rose to her full height - again, rather more than Rose's already - and said, "I don't really know what to say to you."
"Come and sit down," said Max, leading her through to the living room. "Can I get you something to drink?"
"Are you having anything?" asked Dawn.
"If you are." Wow, this was productive.
"I'll have a soda. Whatever you've got."
The four grown-ups in the kitchen all stopped talking abruptly when Max walked in. He crossed the room, took two sodas from the fridge and left again without even looking at them. He handed a can to Dawn, sat down with his and listened to the crack and fizz as they popped the drinks open. It was a beautiful sound.
"Doesn't it drive you nuts?" asked Max.
"Not really," said Dawn. "I mean, I wonder sometimes. What you might find is that you'll be walking down the street and you'll suddenly think, Hey, almost any one of these guys might be my father! But I guess maybe you had that before," she added.
"No," said Max. It had never occurred to him before, but now he was sure it would drive him mad every time he went out. "I didn't."
"The difference between you and me," said Dawn, "is that I could probably find out one day, if I ever wanted to."
"Do you think you will want to?"
"Right now I don't think I will." She shrugged. "Maybe I'll change my mind."
"I guess your mom remembers them," said Max.
"Of course she does," said Dawn, looking puzzled.
"Jackie doesn't remember."
"Oh."
"Is she still in touch with them?"
"I asked her," said Dawn. "She can get in touch with one of them, and there's another she could easily track down. There was one whose name she never even found out, he was just a one-night stand - but two out of three is all I need if I want to know who it is."
"Why don't you want to know?" asked Max.
"Well, because… what would I do once I knew? Try to have a relationship with him? I mean, chances are it's not the one-night stand - and I just don't think it would work."
"It might."
"Yeah, it might. But not until I'm older, probably."
"I wish it didn't matter to me," said Max. "I mean, I have a dad."
"I don't," said Dawn.
"I know. I met my mother, and she obviously didn't like me - or at least not after I started talking. The father's probably even worse. Have you heard about Jessica?"
"What about Jessica?"
"She's seeing Oscar's half-brother."
Dawn blinked. "Is she really? Wow - I'm surprised I haven't seen that in the news."
"Maybe the press haven't heard," said Max. "They'd probably pay a fortune."
Dawn laughed. "Are you gonna tell them?"
"No, I can't - she's my friend. And anyway, money's not important."
"Yeah?" said Dawn. "What is important?"
"Health," said Max. "And friends, and family."
"DNA?"
"No."
"See, Mom really believes she did me a favour," said Dawn. "She says she spent eighteen years being answerable to her father and she hated it. But me… I'm not even really answerable to her. She lets me do pretty much whatever I want - she's more like a friend than a mom, sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I love her, but… sometimes I think I missed out on really having parents, y'know?"
"Oh," said Max. "Well, you win - I wouldn't want to feel like that."
Dawn smiled at him - she smiled a lot, Max noticed - and said, "It's not a competition."
"I wanted you to tell me I was being stupid."
"But you're not."
"Promise me you won't ever touch drugs."
Dawn had been doing fine up until then, but suddenly she looked startled. "Why would I?" she asked.
"Well, because your mom doesn't tell you not to."
"Oh. Oh, I see. Well, she's told me all about drugs - just not in a preachy kind of way - and I'm not interested."
"If you're ever tempted," said Max, "get me to tell you about Jackie. She looked thirty years older than she is, and she was obviously miserable."
"And she missed out on having a really wonderful son," said Dawn, and suddenly Max was touched to his very core. "Are you very upset that she didn't even like you?"
Max thought for a moment. He had told Rose and his parents that he was fine with it, but the truth was that he hadn't really thought about it. Then he said, "I don't know. How would you feel if you met your father and he didn't like you?"
"Extremely let down."
"Oh."
"I don't think I've helped," Dawn said apologetically.
"No, no, it's really good to talk to you," said Max. "Everyone's so sweet to me and they do their best, but I don't think they really understand."
"Well," said Dawn, "if you want to talk again, I'm happy to."
That seemed to be an end to it. Max wasn't sorry, because he'd been sitting still for all that time - he felt ready for a run in the park with Hawks. There wasn't anything else he wanted to say, and if he thought of something later, Dawn had said she'd be willing to listen. Rose was right: Dawn Jackson was a really sweet girl. She had one parent, and was absolutely nothing like her - it was really weird.
As Max shut the door on the three Jacksons, he heard Tara ask, "What did you say to him?" He could imagine how much she wanted to know. He couldn't believe that even Tara, with all of her views on patriarchy and the superfluity of fathers, had made the decision that she did without any qualms at all.
Max went to his room and got changed into something more sporty, and then told his parents, "I'm going for a run."
"Honey, do you feel better for that?" asked Jo.
"I feel great," said Max. "I wish I was as smart as Rose," for he hadn't forgotten how supportive she had been through all of this. One day he would have to find out what usually happened when best friends started dating - but right at that moment, he just needed that run.
"Well don't," said Garrett, in response to his son's last remark. "You're perfect the way you are."
The power of words was awe-inspiring to Max. Rose, Dawn, his father and mother… they'd all been able to lift his mood just with words. He wished that words came so easily to him. He took impeccable care of his body, but there was nothing much he could do about his mind. Maybe that was what the class A drugs had done to him - severely damaged his attention span, and whatever part of the brain it was that responded to the linearity most people found so comforting. And what had one of the people responsible had to say for herself? "You seem all right. Physically, at least." She had given some indication that she could be proud of the body, but not of the boy. It was disappointing, but with what his father - for he was his father - had said, Max knew he didn't need to worry. As far as anyone that mattered was concerned, he was perfect.