Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly.
A/N: This was an experimental project for me, so I can't make any promises. I'm not sure if that would be fair. Sorry.
There is such a thing as a calming before the storm. But to six-year old Spencer, there is no distinction between wartime and peace. Perhaps he's just not yet accustomed to any evident peace or, otherwise, can no longer dream of it.
He sees troubled waters in his parents' eyes before he witnesses their hostility firsthand. Exhibiting control of his breathing, he mimics his father's clenched rage. He watches intently as his father leafs through the pages of a newspaper or turns up the dial on the radio or, more often than not, returns home in an inebriated stupor. On such occasions, his father turns over chairs and spirals into pots and pans, roaring, "I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it!" There is never an appropriate response to such allegations.
For the first and last time, Spencer can hear him crying.
His mother leaves anyway.
Spencer talks entirely too much.
He does this to crack the silence that resonates in every room.
His father, a high-ranking officer in the air force, reprimands the boy sharply at his incessant, fumbling speech impairment. He adorns his crisp uniform as he stares reproachfully at his young nine-year old son. Wide-eyed, Spencer asks him when he's coming back. His father snaps, "Quit stuttering. It's giving me an awful migraine," and swiftly turns on the heels of his newly-pressed shoes.
It's nearly ten o'clock at night, well-past Spencer's bedtime, but he waits dutifully for his father to return home. He takes a sweeping glance around the apartment flat and smiles triumphantly at the polished floors, the dried dishes, and the kitchen table free of clutter. Slipping into a clean shirt, he prepares to scan the headlines of his father's daily newspaper; he doesn't yet know how to read, but he searches hopefully for words that he may recognize. This is his nightly bedtime story.
At the stroke of midnight, he puts away folded laundry and tucks himself into bed. He debates if he should say a quick prayer, the way the overzealous neighborhood kids do before a soccer match, but doesn't think it would be completely fair. He closes his eyes and waits patiently until he hears jingling keys and the heavy sound of the front door opening a few hours later.
He awakes at six o'clock sharp. The sun streams through the window shutters, momentarily blinding him, as he stifles a yawn. His bag lunch consists of a peanut-butter sandwich and a few limp carrot sticks. At his age, that's all he knows how to purchase and prepare. That has been his lunch for the past two years. He had once asked his father if he could eat the school lunch like the other kids, at which his father groaned and rolled over in his sleep. Spencer never again asks his father for anything even remotely significant.
The kids at his school are friendly enough, but Spencer remains distant. He spends his breaks completing homework and reading assignments; his teacher watches him from the corner of her eye, a slight frown forming on her face. Determined that he had become too somber for his age, she once took the boy by the arm and tried to drag him out of the classroom. Baffled, he pulled away. She said to him in an exasperated tone she usually reserved for more troubled children, "Spencer, there's a whole world out there that you're missing by deliberately choosing to stay inside." With narrowed eyes, he replied with gritted teeth, "It's n-not really a-a choice."
He returns to an empty house. As he stares at a rudimentary version of human anatomy in his science workbook, he traces along the body until his crayon reaches the heart. He colors it pink and wonders if his father will eat dinner with him tonight.
Spencer receives an outstanding mark on his mathematics exam. He gathers his books and runs all the way home. Anxiously, he knocks on the heavy wooden door of his father's study. He hears the rustling of bed sheets and someone fumbling for clothes. The door opens slightly ajar. Spencer steps back and proudly displays his brightly marked A+. His father takes the paper; it covers his face so Spencer can't see any apparent expression. The paper is returned to Spencer in a wordless exchange, and the door promptly shuts in his face.
He posts it up on the refrigerator and marvels at his intellect. He then climbs up the stairs and waits until the door re-opens again, and she is gone. His father sees him from the railing and says altogether too curtly, "I thought you lacked the aptitude." Taken aback by his father's sudden change of tone, he simply stares. His father continues, as if he doesn't care too much for a response, "Math is simple. All you have to know is that there's a solution for every problem. You just have to look hard enough. Do you understand?" Spencer folds his hands behind him and swallows hard. He takes this in nervous stride as he is apt to do in the company of his father.
For the first time that he can remember, Spencer is allowed the privilege of conversation, even if it is regarding subjects far beyond his comprehension level. His father brings out thick volumes of calculus, physics, and chemistry - books that, until now, had done nothing but collect dust on the shelf of some forgotten bookcase. He pulls out sheets of paper and begins to draw diagrams, mathematical equations, and chemical formulas all the while speaking rapidly. "Physics requires a certain amount of math. Do you see these numbers here? All this problem needs is a simple conversion factor that can translate into a finished equation. Do you understand?" His father asks for the second time that day.
Spencer frowns quietly as he tries to follow his father's markings, but they are all but lost on him. Open books are sprawled out around them, as his father gestures to a large chemical table. Spencer stares off to the side while his father constantly insists, "If nothing else, this will be your calling." And so they keep trying. Day after day, week after week, month after month. Spencer continues to bring home perfect marks, and so his father hangs his hat by the door and persists with physics. Physics, Spencer realizes soon enough, is not viewed the same way for two completely different people.
He butchers an equation, and his father gazes at the paper plainly, as if he had never done so before. He grabs the boy's small fingers and jams it onto the paper. "This is easy," he says, though his voice is tight and low. "If I've said it once, I've said it over a hundred times. You're just not concentrating. Now– for God's sake, will you stop tapping your foot on the floor?" Startled, Spencer freezes in mid-absentminded-tap and slams down his pencil into the paper. The tip breaks off, and his father stares at him with such fervor that Spencer begins to immediately apologize. "I'm s-s-sorry, d-da-" he tries and falters at the end.
His father's eager expression is quickly replaced with a sneer Spencer swore he had seen the last of, months ago. "I shouldn't have expected you to be any good in subjects you can't even pronounce correctly," his father reproves flatly, as he gathers his textbooks and various other papers in one swift movement. His heavyset frame fills up the entire study. As if within that one broken pencil, the legacy that was once a distant hope continues to elude their grasp. He says contemptuously, "Useless, just like your mother." He opens the door and waits for his son to leave.
Spencer celebrates his birthday alone. He is ten-years old, and he cuts a slice of store-bought chocolate cake that he had picked up at the local market on the way home from school. He gingerly picks at the frosting, feigning appetite, but he has long since abandoned spells of sickness and indigestion. His father pays no notice as he silently turns the pages of the paper. Spencer suddenly jumps from the chair, the abrupt loud scrape filling the small apartment, and he screams to the cake, "Look at me! Talk to me! Why don't you care?"
His father peers at him over the paper. "Only when you want something do you speak like a normal person," he notes with a mocking smirk and leaves the room. Spencer tosses the uneaten cake into the garbage disposal. He tends to the dishes with indignation, biting back tears. No one would see them, anyway.
Tonight, he slips out from the fire escape outside of his window and begins to run around the block. The block becomes two, then four, then, as he reaches the city park, he realizes he has been running for over four miles. He wipes the beads of sweat forming on his forehead and falls to the grassy mound. He's filled with a sudden overwhelming desire to tilt his head back and scream until his lungs run out of air. He imagines nothingness, and it appeals to him at a distance.
Instead, he wraps himself tighter into his thin jacket and falls asleep. He returns home the next morning to grab his book bag and passes by his father in the hallway. Spencer has already long since forgotten the brush of his father's touch, be it out of unspoken love or even discipline. He runs out.
The kids leave him alone. Only one boy remains; his socks light up and sparkle in the misty fog. During break, he tells Spencer about his innovative idea to invent shoes that shine just like his homemade socks. He is easily excited and animated, and Spencer can't help but laugh along. It makes life a little more bearable. The girl he doesn't know and doesn't understand why she stands with him by the bus stop waves to him. She is wearing a yellow raincoat and a red bow in her hair, and she says with a shy smile, "I'm Carlotta."
Spencer wrinkles his nose at the foreign name, though he realizes that his name belongs more to a domestic pet than to a boy. He smiles politely and says in practiced tones, "I'm S-Spencer. How do y-you do?" She smiles amiably and invites him to see her sketchbook: two adults, male and female, and one unidentifiable child nearby in the backdrop of a brown house. Spencer's heart aches considerably, but he doesn't say anything to that effect. He rarely says anything too personal, anyway.
Carlotta surveys their surroundings for a brief moment, then drops her voice into a secretive whisper, "My daddy wanted a boy, so I tried to draw one here. He doesn't understand, though. I can't help how I am." Her eyes give her away, so Spencer shyly takes her by the hand, and the boy with the colorful socks begins to show her his collection of wool and yarn and cotton when she sits with them at lunch.
His father doesn't come home until half-past two in the morning, but Spencer is already fast asleep.
Spencer's grandfather visits, bearing gifts of toys and sweets. Spencer's father, on the other hand, grunts and reaches for his coat and is out the door before anyone can object. Spencer remembers to smile appreciatively as he unwraps matchbox cars and fighter jet models, though he thinks he's a little too old for relics of his absent childhood. His grandfather watches his grandson devour the candy as he tenderly clasps a heavy hand on his shoulder, to which Spencer flinches and instinctively pulls away. It seems as though the boy routinely registers touch as something foreign, and his grandfather wonders aloud if he is happy. Spencer proceeds to tidy up the discarded candy wrappers and plastic packaging and asks him if he is planning to stay for dinner.
When his father returns home in the evening, his grandfather grabs him roughly by the arm and makes his demands. His father laughs ruefully when he is shaken hard from his shoulders. Spencer can hear an angry tone as the voice exclaims, "Damn it, Steven, look at the boy! I have half a mind to bring him down to Yakima with me." His father replies carelessly, "Take him, then. What's stopping you?" His grandfather angrily answers back, "What with all the medical expenses, you know I can't afford to raise him." His father shrugs and sounds disappointed, as he mutters, "That's too bad. God knows I've never asked for this." His grandfather leaves, and there is no more mention of leaving.
The widened corridors of Ridgeway Middle School give Spencer an excuse to bury himself in his studies. He brings back perfect marks without fail and papers them all over the refrigerator in the kitchen his father rarely ventures into.
Carlotta sits with Spencer four times a week after school and teaches him to read aloud the ancient tales of mythology from a tattered, dog-eared book. He starts off slow and unsure, embarrassed over his childhood stammer that kisses his lips and gnashes his teeth. It promises to stay forever, and he frets over his future. Carlotta listens patiently through his fumbling speech. When he finishes a section poorly, she smiles and, with a reassuring hand on his shoulder, says, "Again." They keep this up for months until Spencer feels comfortable enough to show his father.
"Dad," he calls carefully one night, his tongue rolling over the word with foreign diplomacy. "I've learned to speak normally now." His father does not look up from the bills. Scowling, he mutters, "What's wrong with a little peace and quiet? Tell me, are these too much to ask for?" Taken aback, Spencer blurts out, "I thought this was what you wanted." His father shuts his eyes tightly, apparently exasperated with having to speak more than five consecutive words, and grimaces. He replies in an unfamiliar, taut tone, "You have no idea what I want." As Spencer frantically racks his mind for a proper response, one that may even best the man for once, he involuntarily steps back. His father's breathing has become haggard, his lips pursed into a disapproving line, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles are turning white. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale - one eye opens slightly to watch with vested interested as his son hesitatingly walks away.
Regardless, the speech lessons continue. Carlotta reads, "Because Kronos had perpetually betrayed his own father by disturbing means, he was deathly afraid that one of his own offspring would follow in his footsteps. He would routinely eat every child that his wife Rhea begot, until at which point Zeus was born and she placed a stone wrapped in a blanket and presented it to her husband. When Zeus grew up, he gave his father a drink that caused Kronos to throw up all his devoured children and the stone as well. Zeus then challenged and defeated his father and became the supreme ruler of all the gods, the skies, and of lightning and thunder." Spencer audibly scoffs. Carlotta pauses and looks up briefly from the book. He says in a loud, bitter tone, "If he was going to eat all of his kids, then why did he even have any?"
Carlottta doesn't answer. She merely sets the book down and cocks her head to one side. Listening. Spencer turns away and remarks with a knowing smirk, "Because he's a god? What makes him a god? Lightning bolts and thunder? All my life I've known him, and he still won't look at me. Won't or can't, I don't know which anymore. Zeus had it lucky. His mother loved him, and that's what made him strong." Carlotta puts an arm around his trembling shoulders. He doesn't cry, however. For whatever it's worth, it seems as though, after all these years, he has never really learned how to.
Ridgeway High School offers no more solace than his own home, and Spencer is again left to his own devices. It is loud and crowded and filled with adolescent teenagers, and Spencer wanders aimlessly from classroom to classroom with a stack of textbooks. He rarely speaks, is never commanded to, though his teachers clearly will it. He sits in the cafeteria with Socko and Carlotta, and they discuss various clothing material and how to go about creating a successful marketing campaign.
Spencer's frame begins to spread out evenly, his build becomes a bit more rigid, though his skin remains pale in complexion, while his hair grows out in wild tufts from his crown. He wears loose flannel shirts washed into oblivion and pale denims with ragged bottoms. The other students rarely pay any notice, and Spencer wonders darkly when he will be able to discern between being ignored and being dead. When he's dead? He laughs quietly to himself.
He gets a job as an apprentice at a wood shop that focuses primarily on building furniture. As he performs various unskilled tasks of oiling and paste waxing, he pretends that a car is the reason. In truth, he doesn't really know what he'll do with the money. He's never had any before, and the thought of wealth overwhelms him. He wonders vaguely if Carlotta needs any. Sometimes, he writes love notes to her, and they hold hands as they walk around the park. She teaches him Italian, and affectionately nicknames him her boy. "Mio ragazzo," she says with a playful grin, and he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. "Per sempre," he promises, though he does not mention that promises in his world seldom last, that the word forever is not even a part of his vocabulary. She says, "Then let's leave together. Let's run away, and get out of this town. Seattle has nothing to offer us anymore."
Not even in the darkest confines of his mind can Spencer imagine ever actually leaving his father. Unfulfilled and dissatisfied, he would be destined to wander from town after neighboring town accomplishing nothing, and that empty hollow future shook him. He replies, "If it's the same here, it's the same everywhere." He is holding onto the man who has never even so much as breathed in the same room as him in over ten years. Happiness, Spencer concludes, he has long since deemed unattainable, and so he can never imagine a life past his own shortsighted limitations. But he would be damned if he couldn't show his father that he had aspirations to be something great.
Her expression wan, Carlotta merely says, "Our fathers don't love us anymore, Spence. To be honest, I don't think they ever have." She doesn't ask him for his permission. Evidently, she doesn't think it's necessary. She reaches for Spencer's hand less and less, and he, fearing the worst, holds onto her the only way he knows how. In restrained frustration and in brooding, he beckons her to reconsider. "I love you," he cries out in earnest. "I do. Isn't that enough?"
She leaves anyway.
He doesn't call her back.
He takes to cigarettes soon after, the smell of tobacco ripe and strong on his fingers. He tries not to think about her anymore. He dreams about her, anyway. It's never enough.
Graduation comes sooner than he realizes. In the entirety of high school, Spencer has never received a mark below an A. As the school's top valedictorian, he is given the option to deliver a speech during the ceremonies, to which he declines. He opts not to attend. With the folded diploma tucked neatly beneath his shirt, he pedals his battered bicycle down the ramshackle cobblestone road. He muses on how he should celebrate his success, though he has long since come to terms with his solitary existence, if not temporary.
His father meets him at the door. Bewildered, Spencer half-hopes for acknowledgment. His father turns casually, and Spencer's stomach drops. A child. "What is this?" he demands, feeling more authoritative than he cares to admit. His insides were twirling knots. His father smirks openly and answers, "Don't worry. She's not yours. Child services will soon claim her as their own, paternity test or not." Spencer meets his father's eyes and, in disbelief, reiterates, "Paternity test?" His father remains overbearingly smug.
"Is she ever coming back?" Spencer asks with a hardened face, to which his father lets out a short bark of laughter. He says unkindly, "You and your stupid questions," before walking away. Spencer juggles between his part-time job and this little girl who is completely foreign to him. She is loud and energetic, charismatic in ways that Spencer had not known as a child. She is a handful, and Spencer considers law school as a collegiate choice. He contemplates only for a moment whether he should bear the responsibility of this girl and thinks better of it. She is not his, after all.
He is due to leave for the University of Washington come September.
The girl smiles at Spencer invitingly and offers up her drawings of pink hearts. He smiles back at her, then catching himself, looks away. He feels a small tug on his sleeve and hears an equally small voice call out to him, "What makes you so sad?" Slightly startled, he turns to her and gently wriggles away from her tiny fingers. He wonders how to hold a conversation with a child, if he is even capable of doing so. Still, he replies, "Because I was not the son my father wanted, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life."
"Son?" she turns over the word curiously, her clear gaze registering incomprehension. Spencer sighs and hastily collects himself. She suddenly springs up from her chair and races to the window before Spencer can second-guess, pulling the shutters wide open. A sharp stream of light comes rushing in. "Sun," she crows triumphantly. Spencer feels a slight irritation building up inside of him as he moves to draw the shutters closed. She tugs at his sleeve again and motions with her hand. "Sun," she gurgles. "Sunday, mommy left. But daddy stayed." Spencer stares back in such astonishment that he realizes he's holding his breath. His voice is coarse and worn thin, as he asks, "How do you know that?" But the girl only smiles knowingly as she resumes coloring in pink hearts.
He barges into his father's study that night, an unforgivable act of defiance, and says, "I'm leaving, dad." His father doesn't turn, and he doesn't ask when. Spencer fumbles with his hands and continues, "And I'm taking the kid with me, so you can leave, too." At this, his father slowly rises and gazes at his son with an expression Spencer has never seen before. It seems to be a mixture of relief and longing all rolled in one. Spencer stands a little over six feet, and his stature seems to be alarming. His father draws back, as if in disbelief, as he trains his eyes on Spencer's unsmiling face. "I absolve you," Spencer says, finally, his voice taut and rigid and controlled.
"Absolve?" His father repeats aloud, wonderingly. Spencer doesn't wait for a response. He has grown far too old to expect one anymore.
Spencer moves into a small, dinghy apartment. It is cramped and musty, but it's the cheapest place on the market. He starts training for a full-time position building kitchens for the wood shop on Saturday, then college on Monday. He reaches for his ratty overnight bag and finds the girl holding it up for him as if it is some kind of sacrificial lamb for offering. He pushes that thought aside and retrieves it carefully as he glances around the empty flat. It isn't much, he decides. No, it certainly isn't much.
He turns his attention to the girl and tries to school his voice into something closely resembling good humor. He says, "Now, what am I to call you?" but she has already set herself to ransacking through the various corrugated boxes. He sighs and shakes the loose change in his pockets. Just a few days ago, he had been renewed with spirit at the thought of moving out and starting a new life, especially one that didn't involve his father. He should've been ecstatic. Finally, to be free from all those years of choking silence and deprivation! He should be dancing around the living room, provided he could dance, and throwing a party. Isn't that what people do when they move out?
So what is this feeling that trembles in the pit of his stomach? Is it guilt, shame? He doesn't have the faintest idea, as he leans against the door frame where he is standing. Why does he still feel so burdened? He recalls the day he left his father's apartment. With the boxes packed and the truck out front, as he turned to go, a heavy palm on his shoulder halted him in his tracks. Even after all these years, a young man now, a human touch was still new to him. Especially when it came from a man who never employed it. As he turned around hesitantly, his father held up an old, battered textbook. Spencer turned it over intriguingly, but when he saw the cover, his blood ran cold.
"Physics," he said in a voice he was sure didn't belong to him. There was a brief, shocked pause. "I thought I lacked the aptitude. Isn't that what you said?" Wearing a rather bemused expression, his father merely crossed his arms against his broadened chest and looked on. He didn't say goodbye. He stood by the porch and only watched with hardened eyes, tracing along Spencer's sinewy frame and then onto the small girl clambering with difficulty into the truck.
Spencer watches the girl tumble into another box. Her movements are light and nimble, and she seems to live her life day-by-day, probably never imagining that everything is all connected somehow. Such a life never interested Spencer. To be honest, he is not sure if he can ever understand it. He was neither born nor borne witness to any insight onto some worldly plan. Oh, arbitrarily, he speculates that some things have to be sacrificed to make way for grander schemes. But for seventeen-year old Spencer, there exists no equivalent exchange for one or the other. Nothing is ever guaranteed in his life. Not love, not his mother, not even a saving grace that may have called to him from the not-so-distant horizon. He had struggled and plodded and persisted with mounting resignation that one day they'd look at him and realize, why, there's really nothing to him after all.
Last night, he had dreamed Carlotta stood in the doorway of his bedroom wearing her yellow sundress and red bow in her hair. Her smile was warm and inviting, and she proudly showed him the keys to her new car. He asked if this meant he could ride along. "After you learn sign language," she replied as she jingled the keys teasingly. "Oh," Spencer said. Then he said, "Sign language?", frowning. Carlotta paused, then replied, "Well, I like to call it sign language." Spencer looked on helplessly. She continued, "You understand, sign language isn't what I really mean." He had placed his hands in his pockets and asked, "Then what do you mean?" But before she could answer, Spencer awoke and blinked at the small crack of light beneath the door. Someone's radio was playing through an opened window. He heard the neighborhood kids' shouts from outside and carefree laughter.
Spencer enrolls the girl into Sunny Meadows Daycare. He recalls his dream vividly and is convinced that there has to be some kind of message in this, but the harder he tries to decipher it, the farther away it seems to drift. This probably explains why, when the director of the day care asks for the girl's name, Spencer answers absentmindedly, "Well, I don't know. Carlotta, I guess." Even now, the name strikes him as something odd, as he pauses briefly after he says it. The director raises an eyebrow and comments on the name's Italian origin. Spencer shrugs and signs the documents, anyway.
But even as he returns home, he questions vaguely why he chose that specific name. This child is nothing like the Carlotta he remembers. She is altogether too cheerful, her exuberance too charming and flashy and even a little bit harem scarum, and not a single worry to tie her to the world. His Carlotta was, well, something entirely different. Though for some reason, he can't call to mind any particular trait that stood out. A loud, clattering crash cuts through his concentration as he hurries over to the kitchen. The girl is sitting on the floor amidst fallen pots and pans. She is holding a box of cereal and calls out to him cheerfully, "Is it lunch time yet?" Spencer sighs. He seems to be doing more and more of that lately. As he lifts the girl up by her waist, he suddenly leans forward onto his knees.
What is this, he thinks wildly as he shifts his gaze from the top of her head to her distinct hazel eyes. The weight of this child's eyes unnerves him. Aghast, he arches his back to maintain balance. The girl then bursts into giggles and says, "You're so funny, big brother." Shaking off his unexplainable shock, Spencer immediately rises to his feet. As he attempts to tidy up the kitchen, the girl dances lightly on her feet. She is spilling cereal all over the cool linoleum floor, all the while singing, "My brother, my big brother, my funny brother, my boy." Bent over halfway to the floor to pick up a forgotten pot, Spencer's fingers stop in midair. My boy? He is suddenly nauseated by a sinking feeling in his knees. My boy. Mio ragazzo. He shakes his head in disbelief, unaware that he has frozen in this position.
"Carlotta," he says to no one in particular, to which the girl stops dancing long enough to wrinkle her nose. She looks up inquiringly at him and repeats, "Carlotta?" The murky silence snaps him out of his trance, as he smiles openly at her. It is artificial and filled with trepidation, but she smiles back at him anyway. He says the first thing that enters his mind, "That's you, Carly-cue," which incidentally is not even a real word to begin with. Still, it has its desired effect as the girl's eyes brighten while she stoops down low to retrieve the forgotten cereal box.
Spencer retires to sleep early, shortly after he put the girl to bed. No, not the girl. It's Carly now. A shortened, hastily-cut version off the real thing. It's only nine o'clock, but he wants to see Carlotta again. And he does, from a distance. She is just around the bend, sitting atop an old porch of some rickety house. When his footsteps draw closer, she straightens and shades her eyes with one hand. "Is it you?" she asks. "It's you! It's really and truly you!" she cries aloud, her face lighting up with joy. He stops, momentarily confused.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he says truthfully, but she's waving to him in a frantic, uneven rhythm. "Over here, over here!" she calls to him. He searches the street in vain, but Carlotta's face has already faded from view. "I can't see you," he tries to say. He slumps his shoulders and falls to the ground, crying, "Where are you?" He feels a small hand touch his chest. "Right here," the voice says. "Right in here." Spencer awakes with an involuntary shudder that runs through the length of his body. He sits upright on his bed in darkness, and he is weeping, he knows.
Spencer arrives promptly to class at seven o'clock sharp. The autumn air blows his hair out of proportion, but he doesn't seem to notice. The lecture hall is much bigger than he imagines, and he tries to find a seat close to the front. Constitutional Law 101. The professor is a surprisingly young man, sporting a casual polo shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. He is lean and slim and ostentatiously tall—though Spencer is sure that that had something to do with breeding—and his tone of voice is overbearingly confident. Several students smile and wave affably to him before taking their seats. All in all, this class doesn't seem proportionately difficult.
College isn't nearly enough meet-and-greet as much as it is a business-oriented sort of ordeal. Why, the very first day of class came along and before it was even half-way through, the professor had already assigned a three-paged paper discussing the merits of moral responsibility. Spencer doesn't have the faintest idea what that even means. So one can imagine his surprise when he received a summons to go to office hours.
When the class is over, Spencer waits patiently by the sideline while the professor is pushed and generally prodded about by each new freshman eager to gain some sort of favor with him. The professor is calm and collected and answers every question thoughtfully, his speech often resorting to a slangy undertone. The commotion begins to subside, and as the professor reaches for his leather satchel, Spencer makes his way toward him. He calls out politely, "Professor-?" The professor straightens and turns with an open smile. "What can I do for you?"
Spencer is slightly bewildered by this manner. He fumbles with his veritable worn mess of papers, much to his chagrin embarrassment and motions to the note on the front. As if he can read Spencer's mind, the professor says reassuringly, "There's no need to look that way. This isn't some sort of summons to appear in court." So Spencer sets down his book bag and takes a seat across from him. The professor continues, "I can't say much for the general presentation of this first assignment. When I first saw this heap of papers, I assumed this was one of those ill-prepared essays freshmen are forever doing. But I have to tell you, Spencer—it's Spencer, right?—this is certainly interesting."
Spencer's face remains stoically expressionless as the professor leans forward and says, "Whatever possessed you to come to the conclusion that we are always morally responsibility for every action we do, regardless of the circumstances? Say that you were a woman, and you were forcibly led into unwarranted intercourse. Does that mean you're responsible for the child?" Spencer fidgets uncomfortably in his seat, startled how it strikingly close it is for comfort. "Always," Spencer says without a trace of hesitation in his voice. The professor shakes his head and replies, "Now, how can you say that with such confidence? Because you're not a woman, and you've never been in this type of predicament before?"
"Because," Spencer speaks slowly, his mind automatically recalling a recitation from memory. "An object continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Newton's first law of motion. Regardless of which external force is being applied, we are always responsible for what happens next." The professor pulls back in surprise. He scratches his head and muses, "Such arresting conviction for a first-year student. It's admirable, but this is the real world, and this is the law. We can't always be held morally responsible for everything that happens. This is why laws exist, to protect our rights and enforce rules and punishment. The man who initiates forced intercourse is the criminal, and the woman who is impregnated is the victim. Do you understand?" Spencer can recall a moment of sincerity when his father had asked him the same thing. Did anyone understand anything of value anymore? "No," Spencer answers with burning eyes.
Seventy-two hours later, Spencer requests a leave of absence and returns home. The girl—Carly—stirs slightly in her sleep when Spencer sits beside her. He folds his hands and looks away before he asks, "Are you happy?" She murmurs dreamily, "My brother, my boy." Spencer straightens and stands up to go. "Mine," she says before falling back to sleep.
"Yours," Spencer says in a low voice. He is surprised that he isn't really surprised at all.
Spencer is twenty-one years old. As he rifles through his toolbox for his work gloves, he catches a glance of himself in a small mirror tacked right above his hacksaw. His work shirt is gray and tattered, and there seems to be a split in the seams of his name tag that hasn't been noticeable up until now. Spencer grimaces at the sight before him; he does not recognize who this is. He runs a hand through his scraggly hair and thinks back to the last time he had looked in a mirror. Quite a long time ago, it seems. Regardless, it still doesn't mean much.
He carries a stack of two-by-fours to his truck and ties it down with gritty rope. He hurriedly checks his watch, realizes he's running behind schedule, and scrambles back inside of the apartment. "Carly," he calls out, as he pulls out a clean bowl and a box of cereal from a cupboard. "Hurry up, will you? You don't want to be late to school on your first day." When he hears no answer, he sighs and walks to her bedroom. Cautiously, he knocks on the door.
"I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to!" the girl practically screams in his face when he tries, unsuccessfully, to pry her from her bed. Spencer tries to control the amount of irritation spewing in his mind as he wonders why that phrase sounds so familiar. The clear indignation, an absolute refusal to take responsibility. What is it? But before he can speculate, he says absentmindedly, "Just because you don't want to, doesn't mean the world stops spinning, believe me." This statement only warrants a series of screams, to which Spencer tunes out.
What a horrible thing it is to be a child, Spencer muses to himself. The nightmares that never cease to exist but merely keep playing over and over again. Running and getting nowhere, a test taken unprepared, a play shown unrehearsed. Powerless, fragile, and frightened. Murmurs over your head about something everyone knows but you.
Shortly after his graduation, he once said to Socko, who he still kept in touch with, "I'm sure I don't know what will come of this." Well, nothing had come of it. Nothing came out of anything. He had ridden out of high school with full honors, a child in tow, and never looked back. He never fully realized the gravity of the situation, and that threw him off, as vexing things usually do. He let the years pass by him while his heart grew cold and stale.
"You keep this up, you'll never get out of bed until you're my age," he says, clearly exasperated. Carly pokes a head out of her bedroom and openly scowls at him. At any rate, they venture onto the road. Spencer clears his throat and tries the dial for the radio. It's been broken for weeks, he knows that, but he has never learned the appropriate method of coping with silence. He grips the steering wheel tightly and finally says, "I think the neighbors are going stir-crazy with their new bed of petunias." Carly looks toward the window and answers in a disinterested fashion, "Are they? I hadn't noticed."
Spencer signals and switches lane as he replies, "Apparently, the wife studied floral arrangement in college. I honestly don't understand why people feel the need to waste their time on all this impertinent schooling. What possible good can come out of floral arrangement, anyway?" The girl closes her eyes and leans against the window. She yawns and says tiredly, "Oh, let them plant ten-foot cactus bulbs for all they care. Why get all in a rivet about it?"
"Well," Spencer began, then stopped short. Rivet? "For all intents and purposes, it just seems kind of silly, that's all," he finishes, realizing that he sounds just as silly. Carly sleeps for the duration of the trip, or at least she feigns it. As Spencer turns the corner to the small grade school, she perks right up and practically claws at the door. He turns away when he pulls out of the parking lot. Even after all these years, he still doesn't know how to say goodbye.
Come to think of it, he barely knew how to talk to a child, let alone raise one. In his own single-minded way Spencer felt gratified, especially at the beginning. It had been like a temporary, summer-vacation state of affairs. He rooted through Carly's drawers for the mate to her favorite red sock and paid the bills on time, all in the knowledge that he, Spencer, was central. Efficient. He thought about school and the possibility of a return a few months after he left. But fall stretched in winter, and first the university granted him a quarter's postponement and then a year's postponement, and then after a while the letters no longer came in.
For almost four years, Spencer has been working at the same job at almost the exact same pace.
Nothing has changed.
Carly scowls visibly as she stands to the side with her arms crossed against her chest, her back leaning against the wall of the newly remodeled Bushwell Plaza. Clearly, she is not interested in lugging bulging bags of what she refers to as "useless trinkets" up three flights of stairs. She does not intend to adjust her position on account of a broken down elevator.
Three hours later, Spencer unlocks the door to 8-C, what would be their permanent home together for the next seven years. Eleven-year old Carly grimaces at the mere thought of inhabiting a loft for more than a day. The residence is large, almost too large, and the tacky aluminum tiling does not help lift her mood. Her scowl sets deeper into her face as she takes a sweeping glance around. She mutters something inaudible under her breath, to which Spencer sighs and unloads the last of the bags onto the floor. Exhausted, he does not see Carly steal away to the hall. His eyes remain tightly shut as he tries to fathom a world greater than what he knows, what he always knew.
Carly, on the other hand, does not much care for anyone but herself and tries in vain attempt to find the stairs. While she wonders where the nearest exit is, she hears a small voice from behind, "Are you new?" She whirls around only to be met face-to-face with a small boy her age. She retreats a few steps, while the boy looks on curiously, his head tilted to one side. "I'm Freddie," he says in a soft tone, but before he has a chance to get another word out, Carly snaps, "Look, Freddie, I don't know who you think you are, but let's get one thing straight here. You and I, we don't talk."
The boy blinks back in surprise. "Why not?" he asks with no expression on his face. With narrowed eyes, Carly answers back, "Because that means I'm accepting the fact that I'll actually be living here until I'm eighteen, and that's just not going to happen for me." She jams her hands into the pockets of her loose, pale jeans and leans against the wall. She is feigning toughness, hardness, but Freddie again asks in that same dogged fashion, "Why not?" Carly ignores the question and stares intently at the ground as she tries to envision something in her head that may be more distracting than the voices outside. "Why no-"
"Who says I can't be free?" she interrupts savagely, her chin deliberately jutted out, as she attempts to head back to the apartment. At this, Freddie gives her a small smile. It's empty and hollow, and Carly has difficulty trying to place one foot after another. "Who says you are?" the voice calls out to her from a distance before she shuts the door.
Carly spends the rest of the day sulking in her bedroom. If Spencer had not come up to remind her about dinner, she probably would've slept off her hunger until the next morning. Nevertheless, she turns over the words that the strange boy said to her and wonders what they mean. Freedom doesn't necessarily mean one is in a state of hostile oppression. It's safe to say that Carly is not being held against her will–one could hardly call Spencer a captor. After all, he is a shop apprentice, and not much more. Evidently, she does not think much of him. She is sure the feelings are mutual, and if they are not, among the things she is, a soft-spoken ninny like that Freddie is not one of them. In fact, not too long ago, she remembers telling Spencer that her worst fear is to die unknown. It was not exactly a direct correlation to his career choice, but Spencer's face had taken on a look of offense.
Well, what does it matter, anyway? It was not as if she, Carly, had to follow the footsteps of someone who, for all practical purposes, is a nobody. Surely she can't be reprimanded for that. Doesn't it make sense to want to be better and bigger than those who came before you? Carly certainly thinks so, and so she doesn't apologize. In the end, she knows it means nothing.
No matter how much she wants him to be, Spencer is not her father.
It is half-past eleven on Tuesday, a school night, and Carly has fallen fast asleep on the couch in front of the blaring television set. Spencer shuts it off as he stumbles in the dark, trying to find an area on the floor that isn't covered with a pile of clothes or knickknacks from the shop. He unbuttons his work shirt, and, eventually finding an uncovered step, sinks down while burying his face into his large hands. Gawkish, that's the word. On second thought, is it really a word at all?
"Who are you?" the girl's voice calls out to him sleepily, abstractedly, interrupting his train of thought. He says nothing as Carly's voice becomes thinner and more tired. "Who am I?" she repeats, though it's not quite the same question. The faint murmur of the air conditioner eventually lulls her back to sleep, and Spencer releases a breath of relief. What is it about this girl that terrifies him so? Often times, she drops into spells of stormy indignation, refusing to speak at all for days on end. She only emerges from the silence to casually remark about his standard of living. "When was it?" she once asked him. Spencer only paused briefly, before she continued, "The day you woke up and decided to settle for mediocrity. I mean, was there a certain conscious point in your life when you thought to yourself, 'I'm happy being ordinary'?"
Well. Spencer never quite knew how to answer a question like that. It strikes him as unfair, openly cruel, that she may never understand the sacrifices he made for her. And besides, he doesn't consider himself an immediate failure. Face it, there are worse careers than building furniture and dealing with unappreciative customers who never pay much notice to the work involved behind cutting precise angles and the importance of dovetails. Maybe his life isn't what he wanted, what he imagined for himself when he was eighteen, but whose is? If there's one thing Spencer learned about this life, it is the fact that no one ever gets what they want. Whatever falls into your hands, whatever that just happens to come along, that's it. That's all you get.
But try explaining that to a twelve-year old girl just beginning middle school. Spencer knows that Carly doesn't see it that way. No compromises for Carly, no middle ground or lowering of heights for her. "I will never die unknown," she had said to Spencer once, her face staunch and set. Instead of nodding tolerantly as he should have, Spencer had felt kicked in the face. Unknown.
Maybe it's the thirteen-year age difference, or maybe it's the fact that Spencer has been groomed for years to show no emotion, not even remorse. Or maybe everyone is singing the same song he never learned the lyrics to. In any case, Spencer has long since given up trying to keep the night from turning into day.
To answer Carly's original question, no, Spencer can't say with certainty that he is happy about being ordinary or other. He's not sure if he understands the concept behind such a foreign, fleeting emotion. Though the girl is sure to argue persistently about how happiness, or at least the pursuit of happiness, is an inherent human right, a birthright, really, he knows it's not fated to be. Why, even birth isn't a birthright. It's not even a choice. It happens the way everything else happens. Purely by accident. However, Spencer never says anything he feels too strongly about, and so he lets Carly believe that he's living for no other reason but to stay awake.
It's not that he particularly minds sleep. His Carlotta has all but faded from memory, but she still finds a way into his dreams. It's haunting, really, and the lingering scent of her musky perfume twirls like misty smoke in his eyes. It occurs to Spencer that he loved her, that he still loves her, and now she occupies most of his nights but not in the way he has ever wanted. He would wake up from such dreams clutching fistfuls of nothing more than air. It seems as though that, after all this time, she continues to leave him every morning. It makes him feel alone and more desolate than he ever has when he was awake. Those were the worst kind of nights.
They just weren't real.
It is in the summer of Carly's fourteenth birthday when Spencer's father calls.
Spencer does not register this with shock. This is not the first time this has happened. However, it is the first time Spencer's father specifically asks for "the girl." Spencer hesitates, his eyes glancing over to her, but Carly only holds her hand out for the phone. The talk appears to be light, more informative than conversational at best. Spencer knows he is holding his breath as he waits impatiently for the call to end.
But even when it does end, he does not know how to word the question that was already at the tip of his tongue. Carly stares at the phone and says in a rather offhanded, almost sarcastic way, "He's stationed in Alaska. In a submarine, no less. He says his tour is going to last for over two years." She pauses, and Spencer wonders if she assumes that he needs time to let it sink in, until he sees her hardened posture and tightened face. Her breathing has rapidly shifted from a steady, almost absent rhythm to a series of heavy inhales and exhales. Spencer watches with the dawning realization that all this seems too familiar somehow, too repetitive. Too real.
As he attempts to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, Carly turns to him with one hand wrapped tightly around the phone and the other coiled into a firm fist. Her cold gaze fixes on Spencer so defiantly that Spencer wonders if this is another one of those wordless exchanges he has grown so accustomed to. That is, before she says to him, "He should've reconsidered." As an afterthought, she added, "Why didn't you?" Spencer smiles grimly, the first genuine smile he has ever given freely. He gently removes the phone from her grip. "It was never about me in the first place. In the end, it was always about you," he says to her, but he knows he is saying it to himself.
From the brief flash in her eyes, it's evident that she finally understands what has taken Spencer nearly twenty-seven years to see. The distinction between wartime and peace is the ending of one that signals the beginning of the other. Though it does little to liberate a child, though it can never be much consolation even to a child who has grown, there is such a thing as a calming after the storm.
"What am I to you?" Carly speaks up softly.
Spencer laughs.
"Mine."