Charles was not particularly fond of his parents. Nor were they particularly fond of him. They found him… unsettling. And they dealt with him the in the same manner with which the handled all matters that they were unsettled by; they ignored him. At times, his parent's indifference saddened him. But these times were few and far between; after all, Charles had never known anything but indifference. How could one identify oneself as lonely if it is all one has ever experienced? His isolation was simply part of his anatomy, like the beating of his heart, or the thrumming of blood in his ears. It was a part of him; an unsettling part that he ignored tenaciously.
His earliest memory of his mother was not a happy one. She was scolding him for sneaking into her dressing room early one morning.
"Charles, you silly thing, what are you doing here?" She said in a surprised tone. Her eyes were a deep shade of blue; very lovely.
Charles drew up beside his mother, and clasped her hand.
"I love you." He said, grinning.
She sighed, an exasperated sigh.
"I love you too sweetie," she pecked him on the cheek, and turned back to her vanity. "You're lucky that I awoke early this morning; else you would have caught me without my face on," she said absently, "it's impolite to interrupt a women before she has put on her makeup Charles, remember that". Realizing that his interview was over, he regretfully left his mother to her ablutions.
Wandering down the great halls of his father's house, Charles began to ponder his mother's words. He didn't know his mother could take her face off. How interesting! He tugged thoughtfully at his ear, but no, his features appeared to be glued to his head. This disappointed him greatly.
When his nanny wasn't looking, he would sometimes flick through the big doctor books in his father's library. He couldn't understand many of the words, but he like liked the pictures: naked people with big holes in their skin so you could peer into their insides, or maybe no skin at all. He imagined his mother with no face: all the muscles and tendons exposed and rippling as she moved. He grinned at the thought.
Later that evening, Charles watched from the staircase as his father paced the hall in obvious agitation. A tall, thin man opened the big doors and peered in.
"Shouldn't we be heading off soon Brian? Mr. Summers is not a man that you want to keep waiting." He said cautiously to father.
"Curse that women!" Said father, "She refuses to leave until she finds it."
Charles felt a feeling of dread creeping up his spine. He knew exactly why mother refused to leave the house.
She must have lost her face.
And it was up to him to find it.
Charles knew that it had to be around the house somewhere; his mother was too fashionable a lady to leave the house without her face. He had heard his father say so many times. So Charles searched high and low, under chairs, between the cushions in his mother's sitting room, under his bed… though he didn't really think that it would be there. Why would mother come to his room?
It was no use. The house was simply too big. He couldn't hope to fully search even on of its three wings before nanny discovered him missing from bed. He surveyed the room, trying desperately to think of something. He spied one of his mother's shawl draped over the back of a couch, and was seized by an idea. He seized it in his tiny hands and raced out of the sitting room. It smelt like vanilla. Like Mother.
"Father!" He shouted, charging down the stairs, "Father, don't worry! Mr. Summer's won't be angry that you were late and that mother lost her face because she can wear this shawl and then you can make her a new face in the morning because you're a doctor!" He skidded to a halt in front of his father, flushed with exertion and pride.
His father looked down at him quizzically.
"Err, right…" He looked at nanny. "What have been feeding him?"
"Don't worry Dr. Xavier, he is just a but over excited is all. I shall take him to bed immediately." Said Nanny, grasping him by the arm.
"But what about Mother's face?" Cried Charles, "she needs her shawl!"
He wriggled out of Nanny's grasp and pushed the shawl into father's big hands.
His father features twisted in an odd combination of bemusement and annoyance.
"Thank you for your concern Son, but your mother has plenty of shawls." He smiled, "you should see her Charga-Plate bill." The thin man beside father snorted. "See? Your uncle Albert agrees with me. She won't miss this one." He pushed the shawl back into Charles's hands. "You keep it."
That night, Charles went to bed wrapped in his Mother shawl. The smell of vanilla enveloped him as he went to sleep, and he dreamed that his mother lay beside him.
Forever after, Charles would remember his mother's scent. Channel No.5; he would learn the name of her perfume later, but as a child he only thought of it as the smell of mother. While she was away, the he would sometimes sneak into her room and bury himself in her fur wraps, and in the vanilla scent that clung to them. He imagined that this would be what it felt like to hug her. Strange though it may seem, his Mother's trips to distant lands were when Charles felt closest to her.