The café was dimly lit and awkwardly furnished, rounding off an equally graceless and anonymous city block but Susan was happy. No crowds. No one cared if they smoked. Yves, however, never bothered to ask permission anyway.
"Management here is excellent," she cooed, proudly exhaling an elegant stream of blue smoke. "No one to stare at us like we card carrying members of the Scum Club."
Susan's chuckle came out low and vaporous. "Don't let it go to your head, now."
They were quiet, smirking at one another. It wasn't like them to talk much, even if it had been some time since their last meeting. But Susan could read Yves characteristic and easy satisfaction and similarly Yves could sense no trouble beneath her own pale ease so they relaxed into a familiar and amiable silence and allowed their minds to wander.
Susan lit another cigarette and neglected her tea. She gazed out of the window beside their small table, enjoying the late afternoon palette; yellow air, a sickly haze hanging low across a smear of gray sky. It will rain, she observed with a small smile and thought of the box of gardenias nestled outside her windowsill. She was hopeful for one final bloom before the end of fall. The rain would help.
Gotham had had a dry autumn. She lamented the hell it had wrought on her sinuses but had nonetheless savored the crisp air and the slow beauty of the changing leaves. The bold and lustful red maple leaves were her favorite, as crimson as her hair. It was her mother who had first made the comparison when she was merely a child. A deep ache rolled through her then, at the thought of her mother.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly five.
"What are you dong tonight?" Yves said suddenly, stubbing her cigarette and tossing her white blonde hair. "I think we ought to get very drunk. Smoke too much, philosophize, have us a gay old time."
Susan laughed, extinguishing her own cigarette. It had been perhaps too long since she and Yves had shared a bottle and a brave night. Truth be told, Susan was a woman of reasonable vice. She liked to drink and do a thorough job of it, especially with Yves who always had a story to tell or an ex-lover to call and heckle.
But not tonight.
"I can't," she said simply, "My mother is expecting me. She doesn't want to spend tonight alone."
The color rose in Yves pale face. "I understand, I suppose." Susan could sense her mild annoyance and knew how her friend hated ceremony and loathed glum tidings even more. "You don't know suppose all this…pretense simply makes things worse? It's been ten years, Susan – "
"There's no need to lecture me on my grief, Yves" Susan clipped, glancing sharply away from her friend and out into the street once more. She counted three passing cars before she spoke again, measuring her irritation. "I am fine. My mother is not."
Yves was silent and lit another cigarette. She could not understand because she did not want to. It was just the same. Susan would not have welcomed sympathy from anyone, not even from her only close friend.
She stood, collecting her things and shoving the shriveled pack of remaining cigarettes into the pocket of her cardigan. "Perhaps next week." She left without ceremony, pausing only to kiss Yves lightly on the cheek.
Susan wasn't upset. The small and self-righteous irritation she'd felt at Yves impatience had been short-lived. The topic of her father's disappearance was simply not one she could discuss outside the company of her mother.
It was not exactly the anniversary of the day her father vanished she reasoned – the precise date or any of the specifics for that matter remained unknown. No, rather, it was on this day, ten years ago, that her mother had returned from work overseas without her father.
By now she'd reached the subway station and made her way down to the terminal, swiping her card and moving through the turnstiles. When her train arrived, she boarded and slid easily into an empty seat. The car was not busy despite the hour and Susan was thankful. She let her thoughts mingle, lulled by the familiar buzz and rattle of the ride.
Ten years…
It seemed altogether vast and minute, that little fact. So much had happened and yet, at the same time, so little. The years of course had left their mark upon Gotham city. For such a town, a decade was plenty of time to run itself into chaos and then, with much sanctimonious effort, dig itself out. Although she'd been born and attended school in Gotham, Susan hadn't known the city well as a child and adolescent; her parents work and subsequent wealth allowed them to travel often. When she'd returned to the city at fifteen, permanently, unbeknownst to her at the time, she'd had the chance to fully recognize its awful and mighty glory.
Gotham was hell for the righteous and a playground for the corrupt. For the impassive, like herself, it was merely food for thought.
But oh, as a teenager, impassioned and frustrated with her parents and the abrupt and inevitable change life had brought her, she'd hated the city. How could you present a place so steeped in decay and common crime to an angry child who'd found the world before she'd found herself?
Time had weaned her of her temper and the city had made her cold, stunted the growth of her passion, and denied her the wonder she so craved after a childhood of adventure and curiosity. But she adapted. It had been difficult of course. She often found herself incapable of dealing with her mother's wearisome paranoia, her fits of panic, the lost and harrowed look in her eyes that Susan had first seen in the days following her mother's return…
The first years were the hardest, yes. Her mother had never been an overly warm woman. In fact, despite her parent's intellectual achievements, they approached their role as parents with awkward affection and distant care – something Susan had never resented them for. But on her mother's return, she had seen something growing within her mother that hadn't been there before: fear.
It broke her heart.
The only explanation Susan could salvage was a distant memory, falling apart with age. When she tried to reach back into her mind, to search her own depths for some forgotten link to her father, some reason for her mother's fear, she could remember snow-capped mountains in a foreign land. Cold rooms in an unfamiliar vacation home, a knock at the door in the middle of the night, strangers, the smell of blood…and most clearly the voices of her parents discussing what would become of her.
Her eagerness to make sense of these memories never seemed to lose its luster, even as the years carried her farther away from her father; a distance her mother had maintained by refusing her questions and had begun the day she had decided neither her nor her daughter would take his name. So Susan, very suddenly, had been Isley now – instead of Pavel.
Perhaps I'll try again tonight…for some answers…
Susan was torn quite suddenly from her thoughts with the announcement of her approaching stop. The car had filled quite considerably and she was careful as she snaked her way to the doors. Staring at her ghostly reflection in the greasy glass of the subway door, she blinked the worry away from her eyes. She wanted to greet her mother with an easy smile.
"Have some more wine, mom."
Susan pushed the warm green bottle to her mother, careful not to nudge the half empty pint of ice cream between them and the glass picture frame of her father that had been ceremoniously propped in the middle of the table. She knew from the dust lining its delicate cut that her mother had retrieved its hiding place, a high shelf or a bureau drawer, just for her visit. She quenched the lump in her throat with a hard swallow of wine.
"I know what you're doing," her mother smiled at her, picking up the bottle and examining the rustic script of the label, "You're trying to butter me up for something…"
Susan couldn't stop her own grin. "Another glass of wine wouldn't hurt your nerves. I know for a fact it does nothing but soothe mine." She downed the rest of her glass with some bravado just to prove her point. It had the desired effect: her mother laughed. Susan joined in despite the familiar burn in her belly, happy for this moment of relief from such a somber occasion, happy for the sound of her mother's laughter.
Dinner, she would admit, had been uncomfortable. Conversation was just as slow and sullen as Susan remembered. She had stared down into the worn grain of the wooden dining table, picking at its pock marks when her efforts to muster lively conversation flagged and faltered; she couldn't recall how many times she'd felt the same unease as a teenager, trying so hard to charm her mother into a smile, into some semblance of normalcy, of content.
But, now, her nerves were settling in her stomach along with a glass of wine and she was glad to see her mother smiling – even if it had taken some liquid courage to help her there. Susan had deftly turned the topic away from the occasion and toward her mother's private pleasure and sole hobby – her garden. It brought her joy and filled her face with a light and an interest that her daughter had so dearly missed.
Maude Isley had at one time been beautiful. Worry had wrinkled the fine ivory canvas of her skin and had stained it gray with ill-resolve. There was white creeping at her hairline, contrasting sharply with her faded scarlet hair. Her splendor, however, had survived in her daughter. Susan had grown straight and slender, pale as aspen, with the cold blue eyes and sanguine hair that held her mother's ancient heritage. They shared a sharp and intelligent beauty, keen and strong in its elegance. No trace of her father, Leonid Pavel, of his dark and brooding brow, his stout Russian nose, his warm eyes could be found in her face. She knew her mother found some weak solace in this small genetic miracle now more than ever.
Even for the turning tide of conversation, Susan could not shake her father from her mind. Her questions rolled heavily in the pit of her stomach like lost coins. She watched her mother's thin lips move around words she could not hear. And then when the talk dwindled and her mother grew quiet with a fulfilled silence, she jumped.
"Mom," she began unsteadily, tucking her legs beneath her and straightening, "I was wondering if perhaps – it being so long now, with so much time passed…if maybe…"
Recognition rolled over her mother's face before Susan could sound her request. Her eyes glanced briefly at Susan then flickered down to the bottle of wine, the sweating carton of ice cream as though she had suddenly become aware of their dark ulterior motives. The light had left her face; Susan's heart sank.
"Suze, you know what that sort of talk does to my nerves."
Something in Susan pressed forward and she brushed off the affectionate nickname with mild annoyance. "But it's been ten years. Don't deny me my questions any longer. Please –" her voice broke with exasperation and she leaned forward across the table, "You know how I hate not knowing, how I've hated it all these years."
"Some other time," her mother's eyes flitted about, fighting the intensity in Susan's stare, "Please, not tonight. Not tonight of all nights –"
Again, she insisted. "I am losing him, mother. The more you keep him from me, the less of him I have to hold."
"He's already lost, Susan!"
"What are you so afraid of?"
The question had burst forth, unrestrained. Any other time, Susan might have been ashamed for such a coarse comment; she was usually more sensitive to her mother's panicky temperament. But as she held her gaze, as she watched some foreign feeling unfold in her mother's eyes, she felt her resistance weaken; as if the question still ringing in the air had knocked loose one hopeful stone from the wall her mother had spent years laboring to build between Susan and an aching memory.
There was a long pause, a pocket of swelling air, building. The two women stared at one another. And then finally – a slow and submissive nod. Susan's mind blanked with disbelief, if for only a moment, but then her questions swarmed to the front of her mind dizzying her with their multitude. She inhaled shakily and began.
"What was it that kept you and dad away from me? During those three years?"
Her mother shook her head, glancing away from her daughter to fill her wine glass with a liberal slosh. "No, Susan. Start with what you know."
But I don't know anything, she fumed silently, but she breathed, closing her eyes, focusing her mind, forcing herself to think as her mother instructed. Susan was soon lost to the hum of her churning mind and when she spoke again, she let the memories and her scattered, shallow recollections simply roll off her tongue.
"We were on vacation. Overseas, in a new home, tucked someplace cold. Someplace with mountains…and snow. I was fifteen," she went on calmly, "I can remember the cold – and the quiet – because there had been a knock at the door. Visitors, strangers. It woke me up it was so loud…Dad answered the door. He stood so long in the doorway talking with whoever it was. I remember because I was upset he was letting the cold in." Susan laughed dryly, "And then you were up too and the light was on the kitchen and there were low voices, foreign voices…"
She trailed off for a moment, hesitant to continue; for the parcel of memory she had yet to unload from her mind was a difficult one. She had often wondered to herself, quite seriously, whether or not it had really happened. Or if it had been a construction of her imagination, the fever dream of a confused child reeling from loss.
"The strangers stayed. And more of them came," Susan continued, opening her eyes to look at her mother for some assurance. There was none. "They filled the house. They smelt like snow and smoke and iron and I could never understand what they were saying." She forced herself to stop. A look of feigned ignorance crept into her eyes and she blinked stupidly at her mother.
She would continue with this part of the memory in particular maybe when her mother's own account could reassure her further of its reality.
It took her mother a moment to begin but when she did her voice was measured and slow as if she'd rehearsed these lines, gone over them again and again to get the details right, to keep them fresh in her mind, in case she'd missed something.
"Yes, they were strangers," she confirmed, "They found us. They had gathered our names somehow, from a colleague of ours maybe. But that didn't matter. They knew who we were and what we had to offer. They knew we could complete the task they had presented us with and do so with skill and discretion."
Susan nodded slowly. Her parents were brilliant scholars, brilliant scientists, brilliant chemists. Her father excelled in his field – nuclear physics, chemical engineering – and she could remember, just before their final time together, he'd been on the verge of some new design, a certain reactor design the details of which had been lost to her mind. Her mother, fervent in her appreciation for nature, had committed her life to the study of plants and their endless uses – especially in medicine. Their knowledge and experience made them both invaluable and very wealthy.
The older woman knew her daughter's question before it reached her lips.
"They wanted us to construct a mechanism, a sort of respiratory apparatus if you will, that was convenient and sustainable, that would maintain stability and function well with the mechanics of a person under extraordinary circumstances –"
"A mask?" Susan quirked her brow and her mother merely nodded. "What for?"
She was slow to respond and for a moment, Susan was worried her mother's willingness had run its course. But she went on.
"The strangers, our visitors, had only brought your father and me a proposal. After much discussion and after we had given our assent, they left only to return with something more: a man, a patient…" Susan felt her pace quicken and had to all but sit on her hands to keep still for the anticipation. Her mother's voice was deliberate. "This man was one of their own and he'd been seriously injured. No, that's putting it lightly – they brought him to us a mangled and bloody mess. But his face…his face had been much worse…"
Susan could be sure now of her memory. There had been a man and the blood in her memory had belonged to him. This confirmation shook something loose in the dark of her mind. Something she'd forgotten: gray eyes. Ancient gray eyes, white gauze, the smell of iron, and the unmistakable confusion and shame of stumbling upon something – someone – she was not supposed to see…
But the memory spirited away from her, spinning out of her grasp like blue smoke. Her brow furrowed with frustration but she pressed on, concentrating solely on what she knew. She would dismiss the details for the sake of the larger picture.
"So the man was your patient," she stated firmly, "And the mask?"
"Was for him," her mother continued after a tight swallow of wine, "Your father and I did the best we could to help him. To realign his spinal column, to treat the fractures and the breaks, to reconstruct his face – he would live, yes, but in constant agony. You see, we had been mistaken. The mask was not simply meant to help him breathe, but to help him survive."
Susan found herself where she had started. "That was why you sent me away. Why the both of you were gone for all that time."
Her mother nodded, her blue eyes heavy and swimming with fog. "We realized our task, our work on the patient and on the mask itself, would be a lengthy process. We couldn't keep you away from school. It was a mutual decision. And – for what it's worth – your father didn't like the thought of you in that house full of strangers. Truth be told they scared him…"
Susan stared down absently into crystal belly of her empty wine glass, her mind tripping over itself to form some comprehensive notion of the memories her mother had just relayed. The new energy excited her and she felt on the verge of some great and miraculous discovery: the key to her satisfaction after all these years…
"Who were these people, mom?" she asked, after a short pause, locking eyes with her mother once more.
Her mother drew a long breath and had only just summoned the words to her tongue when there came a low knock on the door. The pair exchanged a look of confusion. Susan checked her watch: it was nearly eleven.
"I'll get it," she murmured and rose from her seat on the floor, frowning at the interruption. She made her way down the hall, her footfalls muted by the carpet. The door to her mother's lush apartment was fixed with a peephole and when Susan set her eye to the glass she was met with a baffling sight. Her sudden guests were not baffling enough, however, to be ignored and Susan opened the door.
The two men were well-dressed but plain. Nameless, shapeless in standard black suits. Bureaucrats.
The first of them began. "Maude Isley?"
"No, I'm Susan Isley," I stated mechanically, "I'm her daughter."
"Very well," the other of them continued, "My name is Agent Huff and this is Agent Morrissey. We work for the Central Intelligence wing of the Federal government." They casually flashed their gold plated badges. "We received notice of your whereabouts from the Gotham City directory office earlier this morning."
And you couldn't have come at a more decent hour Susan thought sourly and glanced over her shoulder at the sound of her mother in the foray. "What's going on?" she asked and Susan stepped aside to let her mother stand at the doorway. "What could the government want with us?"
The men glanced at one another and Morrissey spoke. "Ma'am, it is our understanding that your husband, whose name you no longer take, Leonid Pavel, has been listed in our missing person records from some time now."
"Ten years," Susan breathed, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She felt her mother's hand reach for hers and squeeze it tightly.
"Two days ago, we were informed that a small government owned American airplane crashed in a remote area of Africa," Huff continued, "Leonid Pavel was one of the passengers. The plane crashed with no survivors."
The shock was cold, crashing into Susan with such sudden and unbelievable force. She did not feel her mother's hand slip from hers, did not hear her wretched gasp nor the anonymous voice offering its customary condolences as the men took their leave. The official document of report that they had slid into her hands had found itself at her feet and then she found herself in the hallway, holding her mother, feeling her fear, her pain, echoing in her own hollow and deadened nerves.
It began to rain.