Afghanistan veteran Dr. John Watson has the life a man works for most ardently: a lovely wife, Mary, two beautiful girls, Hayley and Valerie, and a little boy, Max. The white-picket fence in Smallville, the stable life, the crying and complaining and grade reports of kids all around. The perfect life.
That is, until John decides to try his hand at writing. Stories. About a certain psychotic detective.
Chapter One
"Honey, I've got the list you forgot!" Mary shouted so that the whole street could hear her, and John, who had been snoring while taking a leisurely morning shit, jerked awake and hit his head against the wall behind him, "There's bread and jam on the kitchen table, I made chicken sandwiches for the kids today, so make sure all of them, especially Val and especially Val, eats properly before leaving for school!"
"Yes, dear!"
"I don't want to see the dog wolfing down Val's portions!" And John hated the way Mary sometimes called Gladstone 'the dog', "Oh yeah, and you need to sign Max's football forms."
"Yes!" John gave a shout back, feeling disgusted with himself for having slept sitting on the WC. For the second day that week. He decided to go back to his much-needed morning repose.
"And Val has a group assignment thing, so she will be missing her yoga class!"
"Okay!" John wrote up a mental note to meet up with Bill, Jack and Ethan during his free evening. Sometimes, everything being Val, Val and Val wasn't all that bad. At any rate, he knew very well that Val was going to some party, if one had to go by the way she had devoted the entire week to making her hair appear bigger.
"And don't forget picking Hayley up from her tuition, okay?"
John heaved a sigh upon recalling the latest change in his schedule which involved picking Hayley up from her math class. Free evening plans gone down the drain, "Of course, I remember, love."
"Okay, and—oh no, you put that broomstick down, Maximilian Watson, or there's going to be hell to pay!" From the way her voice kept varying as John felt around for the toothpaste with stubbornly half-open eyes, she was surely domineering her way around the house and terrorising the kids as usual. The usual Monday morning where everyone woke up late, Mary being a deep sleeper and the kids even more so. Not that John wasn't disciplined. He was. Very much so. Life in the army had taught him that. But then the army hadn't had comfortable double-quilt beds that smelled of jasmine in the morning and lavender in the evening and the plus of the love of your life sleeping beside you.
John got up with difficulty—his leg was a bitch at the best of times—and stuffed the toothbrush into his mouth, brushing furiously while fishing for his towel around. After fifteen minutes of battling, he emerged victorious from the shower, in his bathrobe and supporting himself against the wall to see Mary, completely dressed and running after Max with the sandwich.
"No!" Max's high-pitched voice, which he tried to make as deep as possible, resulting in a comical product that sounded like Justin Bieber finally reaching his puberty, "I'm not eating that shit!"
"Language, Max!"
"Mom, I need my frigging phone!" Val screamed from somewhere upstairs.
"Mom, where's my backpack?" cried Hayley from somewhere else.
"I've burnt it because it's so lame!" Val called back, a habit she had got from Mary. John groaned, limping with the cane in his right to grab the newspaper from the sofa and plopping down at the dinner table. He glanced at his walking stick for some time, feeling something inside his jaw bouncing up and down as he studied it carefully. He eyed the jam and looked away. Had to keep blood sugar in check in this old age. Not that he was very old at the age of forty two. Mary never really cared for such things. Kids took up too much of her time, apart from her job.
"Mom!" Another, more desperate scream for help. John heaved a sigh, turning to next page, now absently chewing on the jam-loaded breaded. He had the clinic from eleven today, two and a half hours with no kids in the house fighting over the much-prized TV. Or it would have been if he didn't have to drop the rest of his family off to school and office respectively.
"It's downstairs, Hayley. As for you, Val, you're getting your phone back only when you complete that book review!"
"Mom, I'll get that A grade. Emmett's gonna do it for—"
"No poor soul is doing anything for you, Valerie Watson!" Mary shouted, and a 'urgh' came from the direction from her voice, which meant Max was now fed. He eyed the football forms on the table, cast a look towards the sitting room, and picked up the pen to sign them. Being nine, it was only a primary school tournament, nonetheless, it meant a lot to John. And he was sure that Max would be delighted to see his dad cheering in the stands.
"Tell mom what you're gonna let Emmett do with you in exchange for—"
"Hayley, shut up!" Val screeched, and John groaned again at that. Seeing as in this case he didn't know who was worse: Val, or this Emmett guy.
"Ha-ha-ha!" came the mistimed sarcastic laugh that Hayley had just picked up from some of her less nerdy friends. John thought he could hear Val rolling her eyes at that.
"God Hayley, you're so stupid!"
"Says the one who's never managed a 'B' by herself!"
"It's not about grades, Hayley. Only brains count in the real world, something which you clearly don't have!"
"Girls, breakfast, now!" Mary cried shrilly, in a voice much like theirs. John listened intently, trying to figure out who was going to make the first retreat. It was usually Hayley, being the perfect Lisa Simpson that she was.
"Mom, I told you! I'm on a no-carb diet!" Val shrieked back, "I want to weigh ninety."
Mary finally appeared in the kitchen, huffing tiredly and John could hear the banging of the front door being shut—by Max running off to the lawn probably. Again.
"Now, none of that, Val. It's not healthy."
"But mom—!"
"No more nonsense! Hayley, Val, come down right now! You're getting late, John," she pecked John's cheek and nodded a spoon at the coffee machine, "You should probably get dressed."
"It's from eleven today."
"Oh, oh right. Monday," facepalm, functioning at top speed now, Mary popped the now-cold sandwiches back into the oven, then poured some cranberry juice into three glasses for the kids. John ran his eyes down an article about a hostage situation in Helmand and read it as carefully as he could. The cane fell to the floor with a clatter but before he could even reach it, Mary had magically appeared near him and restored the reminder of his limp to its former glory, "How lucky. Gosh, if only I had such flexible hours, I could make sure that Val at least ate breakfast properly."
"Oh, she eats alright," John said, hearing footsteps and he knew it was Val coming down, "Just lots of junk and then refuses actual food."
Mary sighed, and then got back on the salad she had been working on, "Read me the news. No time."
John cleared his throat, "Politics?"
Mary shrugged, "Unimportant. Could do with headlines though."
"There's something about a terrorist attack in France."
"Saw that on the TV. Moving on."
John exhaled slowly, "Well. . . um, military coup in Uganda. Some poor bank robbed by the Red Circle gang, again. Barack Obama's visiting Russia, old news."
"Hmm, that's what he does."
"MP Harvey's children kidnapped."
"Gosh!"
"Police still searching. Kidnappers haven't asked for ransom yet—"
"Val, what have you done with my shirt?" another shriek came from upstairs.
It only took a split second of eye-contact between John and Mary for Mary to storm out of the kitchen to Hayley's rescue and John to limp his way towards the cutting board, helping Mary anyway he could. Well, not just that. John loved it when he cooked for himself. When he felt that he needn't have to depend on Mary for almost everything.
John felt his hands shaking slightly. Like they always did. Getting shot wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It had taken them hours to reach where John lay almost dying in the sand, thinking of Mary, a toddler Max, forever-fighting Hayley and Val and a now-sober Harry in what could've been his last moments. Wound exposed and his mates having no idea what to do when the doctor in their squad was the injured one except to cover it up a bit and shoot back towards the enemy line. By the time they had reached their base in Kandahar, John's gaping wound had transformed into a vicious abrasion, badly infected and John himself was beyond his sanity. Luckily, the surgeon who did the operation on his shoulder was skilled enough.
Unluckily though, he never regained the use of his arm for surgery. He was reduced to just a GP. Lost the thrill of surgery to his handicap and of normal walking to what Ella called his non-existent limp.
Non-existent or not, the pain was all that mattered, and very much existent.
"Learn some style, sis," as John finished with the dressing that might induce the kids to eat some portions of the salad, Val came down, and John did not bother gracing her a look. He didn't really like the way she dressed up, especially for school, but he knew that he couldn't say a thing against a teenage girl's (skanky) fashion sense. Mary threw Val a suspicious look and brushed past her upstairs. Val rolled her eyes, a thing she often overdid.
"Hey, dad," she drawled.
"Good morning," John cracked and beat some eggs into a bowl, started stirring them while setting the pan to heat, "Give us a hand, would you?"
"Yeah, just a sec."
John stopped for some time, and waited. Val didn't come to him as she promised, but John could hear tiny electronic beeps and the click of nails on screen, and John knew that Val had once again beaten her mom at sniffing out her phone from the numerous hidden places in the house. Mary was perhaps the smartest person John had ever met, and Val—who barely passed her tests and assignments except for those that she managed to get done from nerdy boys who had hopeless crushes on her and her charms—outsmarted her mother when it came to finding out where her mother had stashed her phone and suchlike.
"Oh my God!" she guffawed, and John heaved a sigh, going back to the cooking since Val wasn't coming ever, "Christen Sawyer totally did not do that! LMAO, I've got to tell Megan this!"
And she went back to texting Megan—one of her BFFs—furiously. John could barely use that thing. Val was real clever when it came to all these unimportant things: texting without looking at the screen, knowing shortcuts and hiding places from all around the town, being almost always right about people from their fashion sense, figuring out others and their weaknesses like they were just books to read from, charming girls and boys alike to get what she wanted. Although, in retrospection, the last one wasn't all that unimportant in real life. Sometimes, John wondered what impression she had of him, except for being the "cool dad".
"You do know that you'll be in trouble if your mom snoops up on you?" John asked, turning to her. He tried not to cower at the thought of Val walking outdoors in that. Although classic, Val's inherent "fashion-ness" (a word that she made up a month ago and used to subdue all arguments) forbade her from not showing off her skin. John knew what guys thought of girls like Val, being well acquainted with his own thinking when he himself was a horny teen.
"I'm smarter than mum. I'll know when she's behind me," Val chuckled, probably at something someone had posted on Facebook or Instagram. That was more or less her day job.
John heaved a sigh and went back to quickly limping his way towards the beeping oven. He could hear Mary and Hayley coming down, Mary's unusually gentle words coupled with Hayley's usually gentle ones. As far as John could tell, Val had got her fierce dominating nature from Mary. Hayley was more like him. Max was the alien kid.
"That was my lucky shirt, mom!" Hayley, as it looked, was complaining Lisa-Simpson style. John immediately took his words back. He had nothing superstitious like a 'lucky shirt'. Except a couple lucky jumpers maybe.
"There's no such thing as a lucky shirt, Hayley," Val piped in, not looking up from her phone. Mary and Hayley both made murderous eyes at her, for ruining Hayley's shirt and for getting hold of the phone again, but neither decided to say anything.
"It's my calculus test today, mom. I won't be first if I don't wear that shirt," Hayley turned to Mary, who, as John could tell, was apparently getting tired of them.
"Max, cranberry juice!" Mary shouted, taking over what John had been doing. John relieved himself and settled at the table. Took another look at Val's dress—halter top and a short skirt which barely covered her plump thighs—and sighed. It would've looked good on someone who did not have flabby arms like Val did. Oh yes, Val was chubby. Oh yes, Val toed the line of obese, unlike the sexy Megan Fox-ish girl you probably imagined her to be. Val was—her opinion—tragically fat. It was apparently the main reason for the legendary rivalry between Val and Hayley. Being the Queen Bee of the senior class—and therefore, by default, of the whole school—Val felt that it was unjust that Hayley, being a total math nerd, was dubbed a 'slice' while she, who was popular and well-liked and someone who "had just the use for looks", couldn't even move the pointer of her weighing machine even with all her will. According to her, Hayley's good looks were wasted on her if she didn't "use" them. After all, why would a math nerd even need looks?
Val covered herself up a bit self-consciously when she noticed her father's slightly disapproving look. Mary had completely given up on trying to dress Val like Audrey Hepburn. She gave John a small smile. John didn't say anything. He peered at the newspaper in his grip and his face fell, "Oh, and Federer lost the Wimbledon. 5-2, 5-4, 5-2."
"Hah!" Hayley cried out rejoicing, "Federer lost. I told you!" she prodded Val's side of the table with her index finger, "I told you."
Val sighed and rolled her eyes as she sipped the juice absentmindedly, "Whatever. Federer is the best. He just let poor Nadal take this scoop."
"You don't even know anything about tennis," Hayley accused her, "You just like him 'cause he's good looking."
"Hayley, you're like, the only one who thinks Rooney is good."
"He is good. God!"
"He's old and ugly," she made a face, and then gasped dramatically, "Oh my God, Jessica Lopez dropped trou for Martin Taylor in Wendy Miller's party last night! This is unbeliev—"
Mary choked on her juice violently and John cleared his throat. Hayley eyed him apprehensively out of the corner of her eye and Val felt silent at that, slightly embarrassed, "Sorry dad."
"Girls," Mary interrupted, after a long beat of awkwardness, and both of them went back to whatever they had been doing: one texting, and the other trying to read Val's texts without appearing to do so, "breakfast is getting cold. For the second time. Max, where are you?!"
Hayley stopped feeling insecure about her shirt and her now hopeless math test when she saw that she was getting late and tucked in. Val did not respond and continued with her texting as John read the criminal news with some interest, especially that Red Circle gang story about how they had dug an underground tunnel into a bank's vault from a pawnbroker's shop. He stopped to read that news to Max—who simply loved spy and criminal stories, odd things really—and then looked up. Max, as usual, was probably outdoors, playing in the garden all by himself and doing God knew what.
"You know, dad," Hayley was saying, "Stefan was telling me about starting a book club at school."
John smiled, "Sounds good."
Val scowled, and put down the phone to chew sulkily on her beans, "Haven't we got one of those pathetic things already?"
Hayley made an alien face, "Try joining one, Val. Anyway," she looked to Mary for support, "the thing is, we're going to Principal Harvey today, and they're probably going to ask us about the supervisor of the Book Club. Now, we want to keep the meetings on 5pm Fridays every two weeks, because people can read mostly on weekends etc, but the thing is that most teachers that we've talked to are unwilling to spend their Friday evening with us—"
"With a bunch of geeks, you mean."
"—with us," Hayley ignored her actively, "and Stef's papa said he'll attend, and well, I was just thinking that since dad—" she turned to John with her puppy eyes, "works the morning on Fridays, maybe he'd make time on Friday evenings to attend our meetings?"
John watched Hayley, her persuasive eyes, warily. He wasn't fond of gatherings very much, in fact at all. Sure, he attended a lot of parties and clubs when he was in uni. But then uni was a different stage of life, he wasn't sure he'd recognise or would be able to relate himself with the Uni-John dating Uni-Mary.
"Who's Stef?" Val commented snidely, breaking John out of his reverie. Mary was looking at him hopefully, and John belatedly realised that he was expected to say yes to Hayley.
"Shut up!" Hayley coloured a bit at the tone of her voice, and Mary chuckled softly, "it's nothing like that!"
"Don't you think it's a bit too early to introduce his papa to dad?"
"Now Val," Mary scolded a bit, "Finish the rest."
"No. Gives me acne," she bemoaned, and Hayley looked displeased that everyone had moved on so quickly from her very interesting topic of conversation
"Hey, look what I've got!"
The Watson family looked up to see a small, blond-haired Max holding a dead cat with the tendons of one of its hind leg pulled apart and blood dripping down his elbows.
John covered his ears before a colourful assortments of feminine shrieks, "Aaargh!" and "Fuck!" filled the space in their home.