Here's an upside down, uneasy fic from an upside down, uneasy few weeks.
This one is miles outside of my usual territory, so please treat it gently.
Stand alone story; nothing to do with my Fearful Symmetry series.
Title: Through a Glass Darkly
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Obviously, they aren't mine. If they were mine, certain of them would not exist. Since they are Jerry's and he has bestowed all of them upon us, though, I have to make the best I can of it.
***
Two words can ruthlessly shatter the misconceptions not only of weeks but of a lifetime.
I stood paralyzed at the desk – at his desk – but the reflection the polished glass surface returned to me was my own. So many times I had looked at that face. I had cleaned it, beautified it, and yes, admired it. Now, suddenly, it was the face of a stranger, and I was being forced to decide which of us was reality and which merely a polished image. Only my eyes retained the power of movement, and they darted frantically like an animal in a trap, tracing the same boundaries over and over. The face, framed on one side by the coffee cup and on the other by the deceptively innocent-appearing catalyst that had started this avalanche of self- analysis. A common stamp.
I had needed a file, and even though I found it in DNA, I decided to go up to his office just to let my path touch his for a moment. It violated my recent isolation, but I missed him. Also, I wanted to check for myself on his progress, have some visual and not just vocal gauge of how my plan was working. I knew his voice too well for him to hide the pain, but pain can signify many things - decay, inflammation, or growth. Which one underlay those velvet tones? I could not totally read him. I had never been able to totally read him. Maddening, because a whisper in the back of my mind had insisted for years that he knew me to the core.
When I reached the office, however, it was void of everything but the echo of his presence, like the reverse imprint on an empty mold. Denied the chance to see him, I stood just inside the doorway and studied his office. His jacket was hung neatly in one corner, but that did not mean he wasn't out on a case, just that the temperature was in the high 90s today. And honestly, he looked stunning and polished at all times, jacket or no jacket. I had often thought it wasn't fair. Like most women who put a lot of effort into their appearance, I marveled at those lucky individuals who never had to, even while I resented them.
The paperwork on his desk was neat as always, occupying the precise center of that darkened, polished glass. On one corner, though, was his coffee cup, and that was the giveaway. He had been called away unexpectedly, urgently. He would never have left it sitting on the corner like that, unbalancing the whole, if he had had the luxury of time. He would have drained the remaining half cup of coffee, returned the cup to the break room, and rinsed it neatly.
He was gone on a new case, then, or on a new lead of an old case. Something strong enough for his passion for justice to temporarily displace his catlike sense of order. Not that the desk was disorderly, of course. I knew many people whose desk never looked like that on its best day.
I cast a quick sideways glance out the window wall overlooking his domain. The few heads visible in the labs were all bent studiously. Secure in the knowledge that I was unobserved, I closed the office door carefully and crossed to his desk, turning the coffee cup to read the inscription on its side, which had taunted me by being only half visible from the door. World's Best Boss, it proclaimed in bright red letters on a white background. Who had given him that?
I picked up the cup, but there was no further clue, no inscription on the bottom. I set it back down on the desk, careful to place it in precisely the same orientation. He would notice if I didn't. He noticed everything. Except me.
No. He did notice me. He just never did anything with the attention. That was worse.
I looked at the stack of paperwork on his desk, noting the name on the top file. We had worked together on that one. I picked it up in a surge of satisfaction at work completed, and a flash of color leaped off the stack beneath to catch my eye. The American flag. A stamp. I picked up the envelope, returning the file to the stack. I carefully squared the corners of the pile, since he would notice if I didn't. I then held up the envelope and studied it.
The stamp had caught my eye first, since with postage meters ubiquitous, official paperwork is rarely ever stamped, but now I realized that it was addressed to him at home, not here. Plain but clearly legible handwriting. No return address. He must have brought it to work with him, maybe in the pocket of that carefully hung jacket across the room. Something he wanted to keep close to him. He had been sitting here at his desk, reading it, rereading it. And then he was called out unexpectedly on a case, and he had tucked it beneath the first file on the stack, leaving it invisible and probably at least trying to tuck his private thoughts out of sight along with it, and rushed out into the city, Miami's crusader, always on guard.
I held the envelope and chewed my lip in thought until I realized that I must be marring my lipstick. Then I stilled my lip and chewed my conscience. It would be inexcusable. It would be an invasion of his privacy.
The trouble was, I wanted to invade his privacy, wanted to break through his wall and know him like he seemed to know me. I removed the letter from the neatly slit envelope, placing the envelope back on the stack. First, I looked for the signature at the bottom of the sheet of stationary and smiled knowingly, suspicions confirmed. It was from her. A love letter, from her, to him. The script was careful, laborious, uneducated but sincere. I gave a quick glance over the labs again, but nothing would have restrained me now. My eyes jumped back to the top and read greedily, finding nothing but confirmation until the end, when my world shattered upon the blow of the last two words.
The letter ended: "I know I've said this before, but I wanted to say it again. Thank you so much for believing in me, for encouraging me when everyone else would have thrown me away, for showing me that it is never too late to make a new beginning. I am honored to be related to you through my little girl, and I really do appreciate everything you are doing for me and for Ray's daughter."
My hand fell to my side, and the letter fell from nerveless fingers to the floor. I could not rid myself of the words, though. I stared at myself in his desk, and the echo bounced around the walls of my mind, an echo in reverse, growing louder instead of dying.
Ray's daughter.
RAY'S daughter.
RAY'S DAUGHTER.
R A Y ' S D A U G H T E R !!!!!!!!!!
I remembered him standing beside the van, uncertain for once. "I've been trying to find a way to tell you."
And I had looked at him, enjoying the rare opportunity to be magnanimous, perversely glad to discover a flaw in him for once, a fault line in that stone exterior, even while I was hurt beyond words at the thought of him in another woman's arms. Especially a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. I let him see the hurt but also my own appreciation of family duties. "Hey, these things happen."
"It isn't quite that simple," he protested gently, and sure of my upper moral ground for once in our relationship, I had mowed straight over him.
"Apparently not. It's okay. You can bring them over."
The conversation replayed, taking on a whole new meaning in retrospect. I stared at my face in his desk and for the first time almost hated it. For the first time, I realized how shallow and presumptive I had been.
Another thought chased that one away, only to have it boomerang. It was Ray who had slept with a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. I hadn't been enough for him. Had I been shallow through our marriage, too? Had I driven him to her? No, I tried to tell myself. It was the job. He got in too deep. But sleeping with her had not been part of the job. That was an overflow of his private pain.
Ray. I had loved him. Still did, and caught my breath every time I saw him again in Ray, Jr. We had met when he was on vacation, celebrating his graduation from the academy. The young, handsome, aspiring police officer, life in order, only possibilities ahead of him. And he had been beautiful in that unforgettable week. Not just handsome, but beautiful, like a star that had fallen from the sky and landed in front of me.
I had always been aware of my physical assets and wasn't afraid to use them to pay dividends. He swept me off my feet, and I set out from the first night I saw him across the room and asked about him to sweep him off his. The intentional seduction, the accelerating whirlpool of that week had been the sweetest days I had ever known. Happy with myself, happy with him, ready for a life of shared potential. He proposed to me before the week was half over. The rest was plans. I had only recently come to the States, but my passion for justice had already been lit by the poverty and squalor I had seen too much of growing up. My dream, like his, was to be a police officer. I would return with him to Miami. I would enter the academy as he entered the force, and we would raise a family together while living worthwhile lives and making a difference in the world. Truly the best of everything. From childhood, I had wanted nothing more.
My father's voice came back to me over the years. "Never settle for less than the best. You can have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it."
It had been the mantra of my childhood, drilled into me hundreds of times. I was his favorite. He would talk of his dreams for a better life for us, going to the States, working our way to happiness and success. I had listened spellbound to his dreams, and it never occurred to me then, never actually occurred to me until now, staring at that flat reflection, that not only had his own work never achieved this dream, but he did not even enjoy the reality around him. Poverty, mostly, but had we ever really been a happy family? He blamed the poverty, said that we would be happy, if we worked hard enough, if he worked hard enough. Instead, happiness was always part of the future, a goal to be pursued, and in its pursuit, my father died of a heart attack in his early 40s. My mother had never been happy either. She dutifully finished raising me, the youngest of three, then dutifully followed my father to an early grave, as she had dutifully followed him through life, never complaining, but rarely smiling.
The face stared back from the desk at me. Rarely smiling. Not true; I smile, I told myself. I tried, just to break that reflection, but the muscles wouldn't work.
I had smiled when I met Ray. It took two years after my parents' death to save enough to come to the U.S., and I had set out boldly into this unexplored country, convinced at last that my father's dream was coming true vicariously. I hadn't settled for less than the best. I was here. And there was Ray like a young Sir Lancelot, the perfect all American man with a job already secured, already on his way to the best, just needing the best woman to share the journey and the rewards with. It didn't take much to convince him that woman was me. We were married privately at the end of the week. I meant every word of every vow, as did he. In perfect, ambitious harmony, we returned to Miami.
And I met his brother.
Ray had mentioned his brother but not in great detail, just that he was the perfect older brother. Ray always felt that he stood in his shadow, although his brother, he said, was too perfect to even resent. But now, with a job, with his own growing reputation and his graduation with honors from the academy, Ray had actually laughed at those old feelings. "I beat him at this," he said one unforgettably wild night on the beach, during one of the pauses to catch our breath. "I found the most perfect woman in the world, and I found her first. He hasn't met anyone yet. And when he does, she'll only be second best. You're the best." And I had returned the compliment, meaning every word of it, and we discarded conversation along with the scant remnant of our clothes and confidently explored our passion further. The best. My father would have been proud.
If Ray was Sir Lancelot, all dash and fire, his brother was Sir Galahad, an equally adept warrior but with a gentleness and a shining purity that stunned me. It didn't take long living in Miami to come to the inescapable conclusion that Ray was not, after all, the best. All of his good points, and I saw no others at that stage, were bettered by his brother. Yet I loved Ray. I wouldn't have dreamed of cheating on him, even if it were possible, which it hadn't been. I might have lost control, though I never did, but his brother would never have lost control. He was, after all, the best. So I tried to make my marriage the best, tried to improve Ray, tried not to look at his brother, and tried to ignore the feeling that, by truly loving Ray, I had let my father down.
"Never settle for less than the best. You can have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it."
Was it Ray that I had let down? Had he known? His smile was more rarely seen every year of our marriage. He never doubted my faithfulness, though I wondered now if it was really me he trusted or his brother. But had I subtly let him know he wasn't the best? Had it been to escape my silent assessment that he retreated further and further into his job?
A single tear fell onto the polished glass surface and hovered in a perfect round spot as if in salute of the neatness of that desk. I looked for Ray's face, but I had lost him. Only my own face looked back at me, and it was no longer unmarred, the tear sitting in the middle. "But I did love you," I insisted, hoping Ray could hear. "It never changed my love for you."
And that was why I had felt that I was betraying my father. I had settled for less than the best. I knew it and did it anyway, and I kept loving Ray. But he slowly slipped farther and farther away from me.
When Ray, Jr., was born, it was a new beginning. He was the best child that ever was born. He was my chance to be the best mother in the world. I threw every ounce of my passion into raising him, being there for him, trying to give him the best home, making up for the lacks of my own childhood. And Ray returned home more and more rarely over the years. It's the job, he had said. He was undercover, and it required living with them, gaining their trust. I had accepted it, but now I wondered. Had I pushed him away? By turning from him to our son, had I added to his fear of inadequacy by making him feel unneeded?
A second tear joined the first one. Words formed which had not formed on my lips since I could remember. "Forgive me." If Ray heard, he gave no sign.
After his death, I divided my attentions between my son and my job, trying to be the best provider I could for the family now. It was months before the thought of Ray's brother crept guiltily through my grief. It was two years before the thought walked in no longer guiltily and made itself at home. But he held himself at a distance, always. And what could I say? You can have me now, since your brother and my husband is dead. I shuddered to imagine his response to that statement.
Again, it was Ray, Jr., who provided a new beginning. The notes began coming from school, rarely, then more frequently. My perfect child, the best one ever, suddenly was getting into fights, and his grades started dropping. Lectures, groundings, and sternness did not work, and I finally was forced to face the central issue. The realization was another offense to the memory of my father. I wasn't enough for my son. I couldn't raise him entirely alone; he needed a man's influence in his life. I wasn't the best mother, apparently, because I had failed.
Swallowing my pride, hiding my eagerness, even from myself at first, I approached his brother, asking for a closer relationship for Ray, Jr.'s, sake. He agreed, of course. He was, after all, the best. I almost felt that he had just been waiting for me to ask, not wanting to intrude. The problems did not immediately go away for Ray, Jr., but they improved. So many times, I had walked in to find him with his uncle talking as equals. His uncle had that gift, making anyone feel valuable, feel like the full center of his attention. He did not so much correct Raymond as understand him, and my son, realizing the understanding, relaxed somewhat and finally, slowly, started to ignore the taunts of others and control his own behavior, if not theirs.
Watching them together had solidified the thought. I wanted him. I had always wanted him. He was, after all, the best. And I knew that he had at least thought of me. I had seen the appreciation in his eyes. Now, with Ray no longer between us, and with Ray, Jr., needing both of us, we had a chance to be the best family. I set out to seduce him, as I had seduced his brother. I seduced him not only with physical attraction, but, maybe even more powerfully, with family, with responsibility. It was Biblical, after all, to marry his brother's wife. No matter that the Biblical reason did not apply, since Ray, Jr., insured the survival of his father's genes. It was the Biblical precedent that mattered.
He hesitated, he waffled, and he dodged. He was his ever-courteous self. He could not have been more solicitous of my needs or Ray, Jr.'s., spending time with us, helping me get our house boarded up and then restored at the time of the hurricane. But the final step wasn't taken. With increasing annoyance (desperation? No, not desperation), I pursued him. He knew it; I saw it in his eyes. He did not back away, but he did not go forward.
And then, Susie had come. I had seen her as a chance to hold the upper moral hand for once. As much as it hurt me to think of her with him, I knew that I would forgive him eventually if I could have him for my own. So I decided to let him do the chasing. I would be the one to retreat, to go stiff, holding the ghost of his sin between us, until he finally admitted fault and came begging for forgiveness, unable to stand the aloofness, that proud, perfect man finally broken as he came to me, needing my absolution. I had pushed him away, had worked different cases, and had studiously ignored him, to all appearances, for weeks, making Ray, Jr., our only point of contact.
Ray's daughter.
My reflection still looked back at me accusingly from the desk. He had wanted to tell me, and I had refused to allow him. So he obviously had taken the unfair accusation to avoid hurting me. He had wanted to protect me, like he wanted to protect Ray, Jr., even at the cost of his own reputation in my eyes. He who valued honesty decided to live a lie by implication, even if not by statement.
I had wanted to know his fault. I had found it. And it paled in comparison to mine.
I spun away from the desk, movement returning abruptly, jerkily. I simply could not look at those eyes any longer. The changed perspective made me notice the letter at my feet. I couldn't let it get crumpled. He would notice. He always noticed. I picked it up numbly, returned it to the envelope, and carefully replaced it in the stack, underneath the first file.
As I turned back from the desk, a movement caught my eye through the glass window overlooking the lab. Red hair, like a flame. I took one step closer, then two, rapt. If the glass on the desk had shown me myself in brutal honestly, the glass of the window finally, completely, showed me him.
He stopped before a table below, never once looking up. His entire attention was on the woman at his side, as hers was on him. His head tilted down, hers tilted up, the intensity shared as they discussed the case, occasionally one or the other of them gesturing toward the evidence on the table, their focus always returning to each other like a magnet.
Altitude sometimes gives perspective. I saw for the first time what I had refused to see before. The two of them fit together so well. A perfect match in intensity, in passion, in beauty, in spirit, even in stubbornness. They didn't totally see it yet themselves, but they would. From this point of view, the identical set of their shoulders told the tale.
I had been trying to construct a bridge by hand across the Grand Canyon, ignoring the already existing bridge that he had painfully, laboriously built, because it wasn't the bridge that I wanted. I finally realized, watching them, seeing what clearly lacked with the two of us, that he could never be mine as a husband, as a lover. Not that the sexual attraction wasn't there. He was attracted to me. But regardless of the legal status, in his own eyes, it would be committing adultery. He could not do it and remain himself. With her, there was the openness of connection that was missing with me. No barriers there except their own tentativeness, and that would slowly, irresistibly be overcome.
Besides, there were barriers on my side now, too. My shallowness, my presumption, my arrogance had been inexcusable. I had hurt him deeply and unjustly. I knew he would forgive me when I went to him admitting fault, begging his forgiveness. It was myself I would have trouble forgiving. Not just for this accusation, but even more, for what I had done to Ray, for living my entire life in pursuit of a lie and inflicting it on those I loved. I had always wondered why people paradoxically saw me as either too cold and aloof or too passionate and driven. No one ever saw any middle ground, because there wasn't any, because I refused to acknowledge anything less than some abstract concept of the best. I had spent my life chasing a shadow.
You were wrong, Father. You can't have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it. And if you're obsessed with never settling for less than the best, you miss seeing the best of what you have. Like you did. Like I did.
Below me, the blonde-haired woman pointed out something in the evidence. Ray's brother smiled at her. I couldn't read his lips, but I read the words in her response. "Nice work," he had said, and she glowed in the praise and then showered the radiance back on him. I could read her lips. "Nice work yourself." Two people, appreciating each other, building up each other, slowly growing toward each other, with an electric sizzle around the edges of their glances that told that this was more than professional. Or that it would be, in time. The journey, like the destination, was beautiful.
I turned away from the window and picked up my own file, the one that had led me to CSI. Time to leave before I was caught up here. I would apologize to him, but I would have to find a way, an occasion. I would never admit to reading his private mail. If that was cowardly, at least I was admitting it. I hated myself for much more than cowardice just then.
Suddenly, thinking of the letter, my mind's microscope shifted up beyond those two fatal words to what came before. "For showing me that it is never too late to make a new beginning. I am honored to be related to you through my little girl."
Never too late to make a new beginning.
Could I possibly learn something from a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets?
But she was no longer a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. She was a mother, trying to be the best mother she could. She was like me. Maybe she, too, had seen Ray, even if briefly, as Sir Lancelot. Maybe she, too, had loved him.
To Ray's brother, she had never been worthless. No one was worthless in his eyes.
I, too, was honored to be related to him through my child.
Just now, though, I could feel the tears of a lifetime gathering in clouds on the horizon. It had all been too much, too quickly. I needed to go be alone somewhere to cry.
No, I didn't need to be alone. I knew where I needed to be. I would go to the cemetery to visit Ray, and I would beg his forgiveness and tell him in all honesty that I had loved him. Later, I would talk to my son. From now on, I wouldn't push him to be the best in the world, and I wouldn't push myself to be the best mother who ever walked the earth. We would both be the best we could be, but we would try to start enjoying the journey and enjoying our family, too, like my father never had. And someday, when the time was right, I would talk to Ray's brother and ask his forgiveness. But he came after my husband and my child. And that was as it should be.
Down in the lab, they were still wrapped up in the evidence, bound by mutual excitement, leaning over the table in identical attitudes. He heard my step finally and looked up, meeting my eyes. I saw the hurt and the uncertainty and the affection and the responsibility all together, and for once, I loved him without the faintest thought of possessing him. "Is there anything I can do for you, Yelina?"
I gave him a smile that for once was all affection and no expectations. "I found what I needed, Horatio. Thank you."
He smiled back at me, a bit puzzled, then turned back to the work and to her, and I left them and walked outside into the bright, sunny day.
Title: Through a Glass Darkly
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Obviously, they aren't mine. If they were mine, certain of them would not exist. Since they are Jerry's and he has bestowed all of them upon us, though, I have to make the best I can of it.
***
Two words can ruthlessly shatter the misconceptions not only of weeks but of a lifetime.
I stood paralyzed at the desk – at his desk – but the reflection the polished glass surface returned to me was my own. So many times I had looked at that face. I had cleaned it, beautified it, and yes, admired it. Now, suddenly, it was the face of a stranger, and I was being forced to decide which of us was reality and which merely a polished image. Only my eyes retained the power of movement, and they darted frantically like an animal in a trap, tracing the same boundaries over and over. The face, framed on one side by the coffee cup and on the other by the deceptively innocent-appearing catalyst that had started this avalanche of self- analysis. A common stamp.
I had needed a file, and even though I found it in DNA, I decided to go up to his office just to let my path touch his for a moment. It violated my recent isolation, but I missed him. Also, I wanted to check for myself on his progress, have some visual and not just vocal gauge of how my plan was working. I knew his voice too well for him to hide the pain, but pain can signify many things - decay, inflammation, or growth. Which one underlay those velvet tones? I could not totally read him. I had never been able to totally read him. Maddening, because a whisper in the back of my mind had insisted for years that he knew me to the core.
When I reached the office, however, it was void of everything but the echo of his presence, like the reverse imprint on an empty mold. Denied the chance to see him, I stood just inside the doorway and studied his office. His jacket was hung neatly in one corner, but that did not mean he wasn't out on a case, just that the temperature was in the high 90s today. And honestly, he looked stunning and polished at all times, jacket or no jacket. I had often thought it wasn't fair. Like most women who put a lot of effort into their appearance, I marveled at those lucky individuals who never had to, even while I resented them.
The paperwork on his desk was neat as always, occupying the precise center of that darkened, polished glass. On one corner, though, was his coffee cup, and that was the giveaway. He had been called away unexpectedly, urgently. He would never have left it sitting on the corner like that, unbalancing the whole, if he had had the luxury of time. He would have drained the remaining half cup of coffee, returned the cup to the break room, and rinsed it neatly.
He was gone on a new case, then, or on a new lead of an old case. Something strong enough for his passion for justice to temporarily displace his catlike sense of order. Not that the desk was disorderly, of course. I knew many people whose desk never looked like that on its best day.
I cast a quick sideways glance out the window wall overlooking his domain. The few heads visible in the labs were all bent studiously. Secure in the knowledge that I was unobserved, I closed the office door carefully and crossed to his desk, turning the coffee cup to read the inscription on its side, which had taunted me by being only half visible from the door. World's Best Boss, it proclaimed in bright red letters on a white background. Who had given him that?
I picked up the cup, but there was no further clue, no inscription on the bottom. I set it back down on the desk, careful to place it in precisely the same orientation. He would notice if I didn't. He noticed everything. Except me.
No. He did notice me. He just never did anything with the attention. That was worse.
I looked at the stack of paperwork on his desk, noting the name on the top file. We had worked together on that one. I picked it up in a surge of satisfaction at work completed, and a flash of color leaped off the stack beneath to catch my eye. The American flag. A stamp. I picked up the envelope, returning the file to the stack. I carefully squared the corners of the pile, since he would notice if I didn't. I then held up the envelope and studied it.
The stamp had caught my eye first, since with postage meters ubiquitous, official paperwork is rarely ever stamped, but now I realized that it was addressed to him at home, not here. Plain but clearly legible handwriting. No return address. He must have brought it to work with him, maybe in the pocket of that carefully hung jacket across the room. Something he wanted to keep close to him. He had been sitting here at his desk, reading it, rereading it. And then he was called out unexpectedly on a case, and he had tucked it beneath the first file on the stack, leaving it invisible and probably at least trying to tuck his private thoughts out of sight along with it, and rushed out into the city, Miami's crusader, always on guard.
I held the envelope and chewed my lip in thought until I realized that I must be marring my lipstick. Then I stilled my lip and chewed my conscience. It would be inexcusable. It would be an invasion of his privacy.
The trouble was, I wanted to invade his privacy, wanted to break through his wall and know him like he seemed to know me. I removed the letter from the neatly slit envelope, placing the envelope back on the stack. First, I looked for the signature at the bottom of the sheet of stationary and smiled knowingly, suspicions confirmed. It was from her. A love letter, from her, to him. The script was careful, laborious, uneducated but sincere. I gave a quick glance over the labs again, but nothing would have restrained me now. My eyes jumped back to the top and read greedily, finding nothing but confirmation until the end, when my world shattered upon the blow of the last two words.
The letter ended: "I know I've said this before, but I wanted to say it again. Thank you so much for believing in me, for encouraging me when everyone else would have thrown me away, for showing me that it is never too late to make a new beginning. I am honored to be related to you through my little girl, and I really do appreciate everything you are doing for me and for Ray's daughter."
My hand fell to my side, and the letter fell from nerveless fingers to the floor. I could not rid myself of the words, though. I stared at myself in his desk, and the echo bounced around the walls of my mind, an echo in reverse, growing louder instead of dying.
Ray's daughter.
RAY'S daughter.
RAY'S DAUGHTER.
R A Y ' S D A U G H T E R !!!!!!!!!!
I remembered him standing beside the van, uncertain for once. "I've been trying to find a way to tell you."
And I had looked at him, enjoying the rare opportunity to be magnanimous, perversely glad to discover a flaw in him for once, a fault line in that stone exterior, even while I was hurt beyond words at the thought of him in another woman's arms. Especially a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. I let him see the hurt but also my own appreciation of family duties. "Hey, these things happen."
"It isn't quite that simple," he protested gently, and sure of my upper moral ground for once in our relationship, I had mowed straight over him.
"Apparently not. It's okay. You can bring them over."
The conversation replayed, taking on a whole new meaning in retrospect. I stared at my face in his desk and for the first time almost hated it. For the first time, I realized how shallow and presumptive I had been.
Another thought chased that one away, only to have it boomerang. It was Ray who had slept with a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. I hadn't been enough for him. Had I been shallow through our marriage, too? Had I driven him to her? No, I tried to tell myself. It was the job. He got in too deep. But sleeping with her had not been part of the job. That was an overflow of his private pain.
Ray. I had loved him. Still did, and caught my breath every time I saw him again in Ray, Jr. We had met when he was on vacation, celebrating his graduation from the academy. The young, handsome, aspiring police officer, life in order, only possibilities ahead of him. And he had been beautiful in that unforgettable week. Not just handsome, but beautiful, like a star that had fallen from the sky and landed in front of me.
I had always been aware of my physical assets and wasn't afraid to use them to pay dividends. He swept me off my feet, and I set out from the first night I saw him across the room and asked about him to sweep him off his. The intentional seduction, the accelerating whirlpool of that week had been the sweetest days I had ever known. Happy with myself, happy with him, ready for a life of shared potential. He proposed to me before the week was half over. The rest was plans. I had only recently come to the States, but my passion for justice had already been lit by the poverty and squalor I had seen too much of growing up. My dream, like his, was to be a police officer. I would return with him to Miami. I would enter the academy as he entered the force, and we would raise a family together while living worthwhile lives and making a difference in the world. Truly the best of everything. From childhood, I had wanted nothing more.
My father's voice came back to me over the years. "Never settle for less than the best. You can have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it."
It had been the mantra of my childhood, drilled into me hundreds of times. I was his favorite. He would talk of his dreams for a better life for us, going to the States, working our way to happiness and success. I had listened spellbound to his dreams, and it never occurred to me then, never actually occurred to me until now, staring at that flat reflection, that not only had his own work never achieved this dream, but he did not even enjoy the reality around him. Poverty, mostly, but had we ever really been a happy family? He blamed the poverty, said that we would be happy, if we worked hard enough, if he worked hard enough. Instead, happiness was always part of the future, a goal to be pursued, and in its pursuit, my father died of a heart attack in his early 40s. My mother had never been happy either. She dutifully finished raising me, the youngest of three, then dutifully followed my father to an early grave, as she had dutifully followed him through life, never complaining, but rarely smiling.
The face stared back from the desk at me. Rarely smiling. Not true; I smile, I told myself. I tried, just to break that reflection, but the muscles wouldn't work.
I had smiled when I met Ray. It took two years after my parents' death to save enough to come to the U.S., and I had set out boldly into this unexplored country, convinced at last that my father's dream was coming true vicariously. I hadn't settled for less than the best. I was here. And there was Ray like a young Sir Lancelot, the perfect all American man with a job already secured, already on his way to the best, just needing the best woman to share the journey and the rewards with. It didn't take much to convince him that woman was me. We were married privately at the end of the week. I meant every word of every vow, as did he. In perfect, ambitious harmony, we returned to Miami.
And I met his brother.
Ray had mentioned his brother but not in great detail, just that he was the perfect older brother. Ray always felt that he stood in his shadow, although his brother, he said, was too perfect to even resent. But now, with a job, with his own growing reputation and his graduation with honors from the academy, Ray had actually laughed at those old feelings. "I beat him at this," he said one unforgettably wild night on the beach, during one of the pauses to catch our breath. "I found the most perfect woman in the world, and I found her first. He hasn't met anyone yet. And when he does, she'll only be second best. You're the best." And I had returned the compliment, meaning every word of it, and we discarded conversation along with the scant remnant of our clothes and confidently explored our passion further. The best. My father would have been proud.
If Ray was Sir Lancelot, all dash and fire, his brother was Sir Galahad, an equally adept warrior but with a gentleness and a shining purity that stunned me. It didn't take long living in Miami to come to the inescapable conclusion that Ray was not, after all, the best. All of his good points, and I saw no others at that stage, were bettered by his brother. Yet I loved Ray. I wouldn't have dreamed of cheating on him, even if it were possible, which it hadn't been. I might have lost control, though I never did, but his brother would never have lost control. He was, after all, the best. So I tried to make my marriage the best, tried to improve Ray, tried not to look at his brother, and tried to ignore the feeling that, by truly loving Ray, I had let my father down.
"Never settle for less than the best. You can have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it."
Was it Ray that I had let down? Had he known? His smile was more rarely seen every year of our marriage. He never doubted my faithfulness, though I wondered now if it was really me he trusted or his brother. But had I subtly let him know he wasn't the best? Had it been to escape my silent assessment that he retreated further and further into his job?
A single tear fell onto the polished glass surface and hovered in a perfect round spot as if in salute of the neatness of that desk. I looked for Ray's face, but I had lost him. Only my own face looked back at me, and it was no longer unmarred, the tear sitting in the middle. "But I did love you," I insisted, hoping Ray could hear. "It never changed my love for you."
And that was why I had felt that I was betraying my father. I had settled for less than the best. I knew it and did it anyway, and I kept loving Ray. But he slowly slipped farther and farther away from me.
When Ray, Jr., was born, it was a new beginning. He was the best child that ever was born. He was my chance to be the best mother in the world. I threw every ounce of my passion into raising him, being there for him, trying to give him the best home, making up for the lacks of my own childhood. And Ray returned home more and more rarely over the years. It's the job, he had said. He was undercover, and it required living with them, gaining their trust. I had accepted it, but now I wondered. Had I pushed him away? By turning from him to our son, had I added to his fear of inadequacy by making him feel unneeded?
A second tear joined the first one. Words formed which had not formed on my lips since I could remember. "Forgive me." If Ray heard, he gave no sign.
After his death, I divided my attentions between my son and my job, trying to be the best provider I could for the family now. It was months before the thought of Ray's brother crept guiltily through my grief. It was two years before the thought walked in no longer guiltily and made itself at home. But he held himself at a distance, always. And what could I say? You can have me now, since your brother and my husband is dead. I shuddered to imagine his response to that statement.
Again, it was Ray, Jr., who provided a new beginning. The notes began coming from school, rarely, then more frequently. My perfect child, the best one ever, suddenly was getting into fights, and his grades started dropping. Lectures, groundings, and sternness did not work, and I finally was forced to face the central issue. The realization was another offense to the memory of my father. I wasn't enough for my son. I couldn't raise him entirely alone; he needed a man's influence in his life. I wasn't the best mother, apparently, because I had failed.
Swallowing my pride, hiding my eagerness, even from myself at first, I approached his brother, asking for a closer relationship for Ray, Jr.'s, sake. He agreed, of course. He was, after all, the best. I almost felt that he had just been waiting for me to ask, not wanting to intrude. The problems did not immediately go away for Ray, Jr., but they improved. So many times, I had walked in to find him with his uncle talking as equals. His uncle had that gift, making anyone feel valuable, feel like the full center of his attention. He did not so much correct Raymond as understand him, and my son, realizing the understanding, relaxed somewhat and finally, slowly, started to ignore the taunts of others and control his own behavior, if not theirs.
Watching them together had solidified the thought. I wanted him. I had always wanted him. He was, after all, the best. And I knew that he had at least thought of me. I had seen the appreciation in his eyes. Now, with Ray no longer between us, and with Ray, Jr., needing both of us, we had a chance to be the best family. I set out to seduce him, as I had seduced his brother. I seduced him not only with physical attraction, but, maybe even more powerfully, with family, with responsibility. It was Biblical, after all, to marry his brother's wife. No matter that the Biblical reason did not apply, since Ray, Jr., insured the survival of his father's genes. It was the Biblical precedent that mattered.
He hesitated, he waffled, and he dodged. He was his ever-courteous self. He could not have been more solicitous of my needs or Ray, Jr.'s., spending time with us, helping me get our house boarded up and then restored at the time of the hurricane. But the final step wasn't taken. With increasing annoyance (desperation? No, not desperation), I pursued him. He knew it; I saw it in his eyes. He did not back away, but he did not go forward.
And then, Susie had come. I had seen her as a chance to hold the upper moral hand for once. As much as it hurt me to think of her with him, I knew that I would forgive him eventually if I could have him for my own. So I decided to let him do the chasing. I would be the one to retreat, to go stiff, holding the ghost of his sin between us, until he finally admitted fault and came begging for forgiveness, unable to stand the aloofness, that proud, perfect man finally broken as he came to me, needing my absolution. I had pushed him away, had worked different cases, and had studiously ignored him, to all appearances, for weeks, making Ray, Jr., our only point of contact.
Ray's daughter.
My reflection still looked back at me accusingly from the desk. He had wanted to tell me, and I had refused to allow him. So he obviously had taken the unfair accusation to avoid hurting me. He had wanted to protect me, like he wanted to protect Ray, Jr., even at the cost of his own reputation in my eyes. He who valued honesty decided to live a lie by implication, even if not by statement.
I had wanted to know his fault. I had found it. And it paled in comparison to mine.
I spun away from the desk, movement returning abruptly, jerkily. I simply could not look at those eyes any longer. The changed perspective made me notice the letter at my feet. I couldn't let it get crumpled. He would notice. He always noticed. I picked it up numbly, returned it to the envelope, and carefully replaced it in the stack, underneath the first file.
As I turned back from the desk, a movement caught my eye through the glass window overlooking the lab. Red hair, like a flame. I took one step closer, then two, rapt. If the glass on the desk had shown me myself in brutal honestly, the glass of the window finally, completely, showed me him.
He stopped before a table below, never once looking up. His entire attention was on the woman at his side, as hers was on him. His head tilted down, hers tilted up, the intensity shared as they discussed the case, occasionally one or the other of them gesturing toward the evidence on the table, their focus always returning to each other like a magnet.
Altitude sometimes gives perspective. I saw for the first time what I had refused to see before. The two of them fit together so well. A perfect match in intensity, in passion, in beauty, in spirit, even in stubbornness. They didn't totally see it yet themselves, but they would. From this point of view, the identical set of their shoulders told the tale.
I had been trying to construct a bridge by hand across the Grand Canyon, ignoring the already existing bridge that he had painfully, laboriously built, because it wasn't the bridge that I wanted. I finally realized, watching them, seeing what clearly lacked with the two of us, that he could never be mine as a husband, as a lover. Not that the sexual attraction wasn't there. He was attracted to me. But regardless of the legal status, in his own eyes, it would be committing adultery. He could not do it and remain himself. With her, there was the openness of connection that was missing with me. No barriers there except their own tentativeness, and that would slowly, irresistibly be overcome.
Besides, there were barriers on my side now, too. My shallowness, my presumption, my arrogance had been inexcusable. I had hurt him deeply and unjustly. I knew he would forgive me when I went to him admitting fault, begging his forgiveness. It was myself I would have trouble forgiving. Not just for this accusation, but even more, for what I had done to Ray, for living my entire life in pursuit of a lie and inflicting it on those I loved. I had always wondered why people paradoxically saw me as either too cold and aloof or too passionate and driven. No one ever saw any middle ground, because there wasn't any, because I refused to acknowledge anything less than some abstract concept of the best. I had spent my life chasing a shadow.
You were wrong, Father. You can't have anything if you're willing to work hard enough for it. And if you're obsessed with never settling for less than the best, you miss seeing the best of what you have. Like you did. Like I did.
Below me, the blonde-haired woman pointed out something in the evidence. Ray's brother smiled at her. I couldn't read his lips, but I read the words in her response. "Nice work," he had said, and she glowed in the praise and then showered the radiance back on him. I could read her lips. "Nice work yourself." Two people, appreciating each other, building up each other, slowly growing toward each other, with an electric sizzle around the edges of their glances that told that this was more than professional. Or that it would be, in time. The journey, like the destination, was beautiful.
I turned away from the window and picked up my own file, the one that had led me to CSI. Time to leave before I was caught up here. I would apologize to him, but I would have to find a way, an occasion. I would never admit to reading his private mail. If that was cowardly, at least I was admitting it. I hated myself for much more than cowardice just then.
Suddenly, thinking of the letter, my mind's microscope shifted up beyond those two fatal words to what came before. "For showing me that it is never too late to make a new beginning. I am honored to be related to you through my little girl."
Never too late to make a new beginning.
Could I possibly learn something from a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets?
But she was no longer a worthless, drug-addicted slut from the streets. She was a mother, trying to be the best mother she could. She was like me. Maybe she, too, had seen Ray, even if briefly, as Sir Lancelot. Maybe she, too, had loved him.
To Ray's brother, she had never been worthless. No one was worthless in his eyes.
I, too, was honored to be related to him through my child.
Just now, though, I could feel the tears of a lifetime gathering in clouds on the horizon. It had all been too much, too quickly. I needed to go be alone somewhere to cry.
No, I didn't need to be alone. I knew where I needed to be. I would go to the cemetery to visit Ray, and I would beg his forgiveness and tell him in all honesty that I had loved him. Later, I would talk to my son. From now on, I wouldn't push him to be the best in the world, and I wouldn't push myself to be the best mother who ever walked the earth. We would both be the best we could be, but we would try to start enjoying the journey and enjoying our family, too, like my father never had. And someday, when the time was right, I would talk to Ray's brother and ask his forgiveness. But he came after my husband and my child. And that was as it should be.
Down in the lab, they were still wrapped up in the evidence, bound by mutual excitement, leaning over the table in identical attitudes. He heard my step finally and looked up, meeting my eyes. I saw the hurt and the uncertainty and the affection and the responsibility all together, and for once, I loved him without the faintest thought of possessing him. "Is there anything I can do for you, Yelina?"
I gave him a smile that for once was all affection and no expectations. "I found what I needed, Horatio. Thank you."
He smiled back at me, a bit puzzled, then turned back to the work and to her, and I left them and walked outside into the bright, sunny day.