Part 3 - War Zone
Dad had walked past Mom and Glen, only about ten feet distant when he passed them, without noticing them. He was now chatting with Marina and getting settled into his seat, about twenty feet away from them all.
Dean stood, frozen, his gaze rapidly alternating between his two sets of parents, the way he might have looked at a slow-motion film of two vehicles heading toward an inevitable crash.
But then Glen was at Dean's side, reaching for a hug. Dean gave it to him, and it took him a few moments to realize that he needed to relax with it.
This is the moment I've been preparing for. I don't dare screw it up!
Glen released him, and he looked over to his mom. She seemed tense, extremely uncomfortable, even. But then she, too, seemed to realize that she wanted to do a better job with the moment. She gave her full attention to Dean, keeping her back toward Dad.
Has he seen them yet?
He hugged his mom, but couldn't help looking over her shoulder at his dad.
Dad smiled at him with quiet patience, no doubt thinking Dean was merely being hugged by another well-wisher. That was no surprise, really. Dad had only seen Mom a handful of times in the past twelve years, and mostly from the front instead of the back. And of course he wasn't expecting her to be here anyway.
Mom's hug had been stiff and uncomfortable, and it only made Dean more miserable. He broke it off and began an awkward attempt to talk to her, while still sneaking frequent glances over her shoulder.
What am I going to do if she goes ballistic and starts screaming? His stomach knotted even more. Why does she have to be such a jerk about him?
Dad's expression changed slightly, and his eyes did that quick search of Dean's face that he always did when he wanted to look right into him. In this noisy setting, he wouldn't be able to hear anything from where he was, but he could sure see that something was wrong.
"So, Mom," Dean blurted out, forcing his focus to remain on her face. He felt like the top of his head could blow off at any second. "What did you think of my talk...and...and...and Clark's talk, too?" His voice sounded abnormally high-pitched, almost frantic.
"They were fine, dear. You were both very well prepared, and you presented your speeches very skillfully." In the good old days, she would have beamed joyfully at him. Now she seemed like a woman barely holding herself together.
Glen seemed more like himself than Mom did. "Dean, I'm proud of you. That was an amazing speech."
"Thanks...Dad."
This is insane! What am I supposed to do?
"So, Dean," his Mom continued, and she stepped with deliberate precision right into his line of sight to his father. "Your dad and I are staying at Shelby's, and you remember that we're flying out the day after tomorrow, right? So we're hoping that you'll come stay with us at Shelby's...they said you could use the hide-a-bed...and spend tomorrow with us."
"Um...sure...I mean...I can spend the day tomorrow, but tomorrow night is Dad's... Greg's... retirement ceremony. You know I'll be going to that. I told you I was."
"Yes, of course you are. But since you're staying in Canada for the foreseeable future, it only seems fair that you should spend as much time as you can with us while we're here." Her tone sounded challenging, almost accusing.
"Joanne," Glen broke in quietly, "there's no need to take that tone with him."
Dean gave him a thankful look.
"I don't think it's asking too much, Glen, do you?" she snapped.
Dean looked down at the floor. Don't do this. Please don't do this!
"No," Glen replied calmly, "and neither does he. He said he would spend the day with us, and there's no need to act as if he'd put up a fight about it. That's all I'm saying."
Dean became vaguely aware of something in his peripheral vision. He glanced over and saw that his father had risen to his feet and was staring at their little huddle with open concern.
"Dean, would you STOP!" His mother almost yelled it, and Dean jumped. "WE are the ones standing here, WE are the ones talking to you, and you need to stop looking over at HIM as if HE were the ONLY one who matters here! It is GLEN AND I who raised you, and did we ever get a speech in front of thousands of people for everything we did for you?"
"Joanne!" Glen sounded as shocked as Dean felt.
Dean had had it. "What's wrong with you?" He was nearly shouting now. "Why are you acting like this? I don't even know who you are anymore!"
He turned to stalk away, but stopped himself and turned back.
Dad is coming. His heart dropped, and he felt sick. Now I get to watch them hate each other. Yell at each other. Embarrass me even more, totally ruining the greatest night I'd ever had. His breaths came quick and shallow.
He could hear horrible echoes of the times when Mom had opened the house door in Dallas and seen Greg. She'd always made him stay out of sight at those times. She'd taught him to be terrified of his father, made him hate the man. Now hundreds of people stood within earshot of her. What would they think of his father if they heard her spewing her shrill venom at him?
Dean realized that people were indeed staring, and he felt himself shrinking, blushing, nearly panicking. He thought he might vomit.
The crowd was moving away quickly, murmuring with clearly embarrassed surprise. And now, without them in the way, Dean could clearly see Ed and Sophie and Clark watching them from a distance with shocked expressions. The rest of Team One stood a little further off, but they also stared.
And here came Dad, his stride much slower than his bad leg required. His jaw had dropped, and he was looking at Joanne like she was a ghost. After a few more steps, he arrived at their huddle, and all eyes were fixed on him.
Mom's eyes shot cold daggers, and she shrunk away from Greg as if he carried some sort of dread disease.
Dad still didn't speak. But now he looked at Dean, and his expression changed from pure shock to confused betrayal. You knew? His eyes asked.
Dean still couldn't manage more than the shallowest of breaths, and he needed several before he could answer his father's unspoken question.
"They wouldn't let me tell you they were coming. They made me promise, otherwise they wouldn't come. They weren't planning to meet up with you." He turned to glare at his mother now, not even trying to disguise his rage. "I wish I hadn't made that promise. I wish you hadn't come! This event meant everything to me, and you ruined it!" His eyes blurred with tears, but he didn't let them fall.
His mother folded her arms tightly and scoffed.
Dean shot a look at Glen, but his stepdad seemed sorrowful rather than angry.
Somewhere deep inside, Dean really appreciated that fact, but right now he could only push the non-threatening family member out of his thoughts and focus on the war that was surely about to erupt between his flesh-and-blood parents.
Glen put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and at almost the same moment his father put a hand on the other one. But it was his stepdad who spoke, forcefully. "Joanne, he's right. I don't know what's happened to you, but you're being really unfair to Dean, and you owe him an apology."
"Thank you, Glen." Dad's voice was an eloquent blend of quiet gratitude and amazement. He looked at Glen intently now, openly appraising him, and seemed to like what he saw.
"You're siding with HIM?" Mom jerked a thumb at Dad, her face a mask of outrage. "He's getting all the best from the boy you raised, the boy HE abandoned in favor of booze, and you're okay with that?"
"Joanne!" both men responded in unison.
Dean couldn't take it any more. There were still members of the public gawking at them from a distance, and his mom had just shamed his father in front of them. Told his darkest secret. Erased all the honor Dean had done him.
Dean turned and stumbled away, hot tears spilling past his defenses now. He could vaguely hear Glen's heated response to his mother, but he didn't care anymore. He just had to get away. His brisk pace had already taken him a healthy distance, but it wasn't enough. He started to break into a run.
"Dean, wait up. I can't go that fast," Dad's voice called, and Dean stopped reluctantly. He didn't turn to face his dad, because that would have meant facing both the war zone and the gawkers. Instead he brushed his tears away with an angry hand and, by sheer force of will, dammed up the many that had not yet fallen.
His dad soon reached him, huffing slightly.
"Thank you, Son. I appreciate you stopping."
Dean kept his face turned away, and turned it further as his Dad moved around to the front of him. The back-pressure of his withheld tears made his breath catch in a quick sob.
"Oh, Son..." his Dad whispered with heartbreaking compassion. He put his hands on Dean's shoulders and held him from turning away completely, then tried gently to catch his eyes. "Son, I'm so sorry. This was wrong. It shouldn't have happened. You did such an amazing thing tonight, Son. You made me weep with the joy of what you said. It was the most beautiful tribute imaginable. Please, please..." he still kept trying to establish eye contact, and his voice remained at a meltingly gentle near-whisper.
Dean's chest heaved again, but he didn't accept his father's invitation. He still kept his face turned away.
Dad didn't force it.
"Dean, I love you so much, Son..."
The dam broke, and Dean let his father pull him into his arms as he let his angry sobs escape. He didn't intend to let himself release all of them, not by a long shot, but he would vent enough to keep himself from exploding.
"Glen's really standing up for you, buddy." Dad kept him hugged close, and sometimes patted his back. "He's a great guy, isn't he? I'm glad I got to see that, at least."
Dean pulled away to stand on his own again, angrily brushing the last released tears away. "She humiliated you, Dad!"
"What?" His dad angled for eye contact again, and at last Dean met his gaze. "No, Son, she didn't humiliate me." He ran his hands over Dean's shoulders before giving them another squeeze. "She humiliated herself. I'm fine. Don't you worry about me."
"She talked about your drinking in front of people, Dad!"
"What she said was true, Son. It's a truth I've had to learn to live with."
"But she didn't say anything about you being better now! She acted like that's who you still are!""
Dad offered him a rueful smile. "And Glen is letting her know how wrong she was to say the things she said. And if it makes you feel better, you and I are showing the onlookers what sort of relationship we have. That's not why I'm here, but if it helps you to think of it that way, I'm glad."
It did help, a little. But now that the tears had been shed, his remaining anger was hardening back into a bitter rage. "If she thinks I'm going to go stay with her this weekend..." His words forced their way out between furiously tightened lips. His nostrils flared.
Dad looked quickly down, his expression instantly recognizable. It said, "I disagree with you, but I'm going to figure out how to speak my mind without getting in your face about it."
Dean could hardly believe it. He felt his shoulders firming under his father's hands as he prepared to resist his words.
Dad felt it too, quite obviously. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. When he opened his eyes again, he kept them thoughtfully lowered. His hands were still gentle on Dean's shoulders. He was not going to accept an invitation to battle, any more than he was going to provoke one.
"Dean, you don't know how badly I hurt her."
"It doesn't matter anymore!" he blurted. "That's ancient history, and this is now!"
Dad nodded. "Oh I know, I know...it's wrong of her not to be willing to give me credit for the changes I've made...for who I've become. It's wrong of her to hurt you for loving me, Dean. Very wrong. And I'll be honest with you...I'm really having to struggle with my own anger right now because of how badly she hurt you tonight."
Dean quickly looked back at his father's face, wanting to see that struggle for himself. It was there, betrayed as much by the knotted jaw muscles as by the subtle anger that had crept into his voice.
But his dad's eyes were soft, and after allowing himself to be inspected for a few moments, he lifted his gaze back to Dean's.
"Tell me what you would hope to accomplish by snubbing her for the rest of this trip, Dean."
"Accomplish?" he scoffed, suddenly angry again. "It's not about accomplishing anything. I just don't want anything to do with her. I'm not going to be her whipping boy, no way." He was the one who looked away now, working his jaw in his frustration. "I don't even know who she is anymore."
Dad nodded, and his demeanor shifted subtly. Dean felt it and instantly read it. Dad had found Dean's point of weakness, though Dean couldn't begin to imagine what it was. He only knew that his father now radiated the quiet confidence of a man who knew what to do, knew he was right, and was now operating from a position of strength.
Dean felt himself preparing to admit defeat almost instinctively. He didn't understand the tide change, but he knew it would sweep him away.
Dad was amazing that way.
"Think about what you just said, son," Dad began, and his eyes now held Dean in a grip that was both gentle and masterful. "There's some important truth in it."
"What?" Dean asked quietly.
"You don't know who she is right now, because she's not herself. We've all had times when we're not ourselves, and those aren't the moments that we should be judged by." He squeezed Dean's shoulders. "When I was lost in alcohol, I wasn't myself, either. And you refuse to judge me by who I was then. It means the world to me that you've let me put my worst times behind me, and you've loved me anyway, Son. I think that, if you'd showed up at SRU headquarters for the first time and treated me as a hopeless drunk, it would have devastated me. I can't even find the words for what your love means to me, Dean."
Dad cupped a hand on the back of Dean's neck. "Dean-o, your love has done more than make me feel better in some vague, warm-fuzzy way. Do you know that I probably would not be married to Marina right now if not for you?"
Dean's brow furrowed. "What? No way!"
Dad shook his head. "I'm not kidding you, Son. I was a complete failure as a husband to your mother and as a father to you, and no matter how much my friends tried to get me to forgive myself, I couldn't do it. I rarely ever dated, and I refused to date any one woman for very long, because I saw myself as a walking relational failure." His eyes took on a warm, faraway look. "Poor Jules. I used to frustrate her something awful, because she kept trying to play matchmaker for me. I loved her for it, but I wasn't about to succumb." He turned his gaze back to Dean. "I refused to believe I could be worth any woman's attention. And if the woman had a kid...it didn't matter how much I liked her, I would break off the relationship because I was so afraid I would hurt that kid somehow, like I hurt you. And besides, like I told Eddie once, what was I doing enjoying someone else's kid when I didn't even know my own? I was trapped in guilt and fear, Son."
Dean felt suddenly shy, hearing his father's painfully honest self-disclosure. He found that he could no longer look his father in the eye.
Dad's hand, still cupping his neck, drew him closer until their foreheads almost touched. "But when you came back into my life, gave me another chance, accepted me, learned to love me, you helped me redefine myself, Son."
He released Dean's neck and put his hands back on his shoulders. Their eyes met and held.
"When Marina made it clear that she was interested in me, I did my best to push her away. Jules fought me on it, and Marina was persistent, but those two things alone wouldn't have done it. I'd fought off that kind of thing plenty of times before."
Dean smiled despite himself.
"Do you know why I decided to give it a chance, Dean? Because you had redefined me as a father, and that helped me to believe that I might have a chance as a husband, too."
Dean hardly knew how to respond. He wanted to look away from the tenderness of this moment, but yet he didn't want to, too.
"Love heals, Dean. And losing love is devastating. Losing your mom's love, and your love for all those years, nearly did me in." His voice held Dean captive with its quiet power to open his heart. But then the tide turned again.
The gentleness remained, but it masked a surgical strike. It conquered, yet somehow made defeat a beautiful thing.
"Did you hear the fear behind your mother's words tonight, Dean? She is not as angry with me as you think she is. Do you want to know what's going on with her? She's terrified of losing your love. Terrified that Glen will lose your love. Terrified, yes, that this monster she imagines me to be will hurt you...but haven't you ever wondered why she insists on keeping me a monster in her imagination, despite all of the evidence and all of your pleas? It's because she wants to keep you from loving me, Dean. She's afraid that, if you love me, you'll hate her for having left me, for having deprived you of me all these years. She's probably afraid that you won't believe what a lousy father I really was...and I really was, Dean."
Dean's heart began to ache. He looked down, but his father cupped his neck and brought their foreheads close again. His voice grew so soft that Dean strained to hear it.
"All this time, since you and I have been back together, you've felt the need to make your mom see that I'm a changed man. You've felt the need to try to reconcile us to at least a civil tolerance of one another. And that's a wonderful desire, Dean. I understand it, and I appreciate it. I want those things, too. But your efforts backfire every time, and now I think I know why.
He gave Dean's neck a gentle squeeze. "Why do you suppose she was so awful tonight? It's because tonight, for the first time, she saw just how deep your love and admiration for me really go. And the more she sees you loving me, and fighting for the love of me, the more she's afraid of losing you."
Dean swallowed a huge lump in his throat.
"She loves you, Dean. She loves you so much. And she really was right to take you away from me back then. She was protecting you, loving you the best way she could in the middle of a terrible situation. She really does deserve all of your honor and love for the way that she's been there for you all these years. Glen does, too."
Dean began to fidget, and his dad let go of him. But Dean made no move to put distance between them.
"Keep fighting the good fight, Dean. Keep fighting to build the love amongst all of your family members. It's a noble thing to do. But it won't work if you fight to make her love me or even accept me. What you need to do is fight your anger right now and make up your mind to love her and Glen just as much as before...even with me in your life, even with her being ugly about it all. Let her know that it's safe for her to let you love me...not by telling her how great I am. She can haul up too much evidence against that. Let her feel safe in the guarantee of your unchanging love, Dean."
Dean felt a new fear welling up in his soul. "But...but...what are you saying? Are you saying you want me to go back and live with them? Are you saying..."
Dad interrupted with a vigorous shake of his head. "No. No way. You have to be true to yourself. You are my son now, not just in your genes, but in your heart. I'm not asking you to change that, or pretend it's not real. It would break my heart if you did. You are also, truly, your mom's son, and Glen's son, too. And you're learning to be Marina's son too, for that matter, though the whole dynamic there is completely different."
"Then..." Dean wrestled with his thoughts for a few moments, while his dad gave him the space he needed.
"Then...what would this 'good fight' look like?" he asked at last.
"What it looks like is simply this, Son. When you're with them...and yes, you need to want to be with them..."
"How can I do that, when she's being such a jerk?" he blurted.
"By remembering that she's not herself right now, and remembering who she really is. You've told me before that she's a really good mom in every way, as long as nobody mentions me. You can love and honor that person, can't you?"
"Not if she's gone."
Dad insisted on catching his gaze again. "She's not gone, Dean. She's not. She's still there, and it's your love that can give her the opportunity to come back."
Dean chewed his lip.
"Now, I won't lie to you, Son. I can't promise that she'll come back, though I believe that she will. But loving well is its own reward, kiddo. You know in your heart how love feels, and how hate feels. Which one would you rather feed your soul on every day?"
Dean drew in a slow, deep breath.
"You are not responsible for whether or not she accepts me. You are not responsible for whether or not she becomes her old self. Only she can make those things happen. But you are responsible for opening the door of your heart, putting out the welcome mat, and sweeping it off whenever it gets mud on it. An invitation may not bring her back, but she definitely won't come back without it."
Dean fought another silent inner battle.
"So," he concluded after a minute or so, "you think I should go to Shelby's with them tonight."
"Do you think you should?"
Dean looked into his father's eyes, searching for...not an answer, exactly...searching for the heart and soul that would turn his own heart the way it needed to go.
"And...if I go with them tonight, what should I do?"
"If you're with them, Son, let it be about them. Invite them to enjoy something with you that you used to do together. Sit them down and talk to them...not about me, but about your love and commitment to them no matter what they think of me. If you feel the need, tell them honestly and briefly how I fit into your life, because that's yours to determine, not theirs. But share it respectfully, and then drop the subject. Be with them, Son. Enjoy them, or at least be willing to enjoy them. Let them enjoy you. Give them your heart. You won't regret it, no matter how they respond."
Dean thought about the idea, pictured it in action, hefted it to see if it felt substantive enough to meet his needs.
And then he reached for a hug. A long, tight bear hug, wholeheartedly returned.
"I love you, Dad."
"I love you too, Dean. And I'm so, so proud of you."
They started to turn back, but then it dawned on Dean that a lot of time had passed. He had no idea what to expect when he turned around, and he was a little afraid to find out.
If they've left, and they're angry, will they even want me to come over?
He squared his shoulders. Open the door and put out the welcome mat. That's my only job. And I can do that.
With his dad by his side, he turned to see what awaited him.
