Welcome back everyone! Special thanks to Flo, Leax, and Allesiah for leaving feedback on the last chapter. Feedback = Love.
This chapter will close out the first act of the story. The next part will focus on Peter adjusting to life with the X-Men and without his mother: healing, relapsing, and just generally having a very tough time with all of it. If you're here for the angst, you've come to the right place.
Please enjoy.
Part 10
Peter stays asleep for four days.
Hank tells him later that he was technically in a coma for a good portion of it, but that was something he never shared with Frank or Lindy or, yes, Magneto.
So, Magneto drove down with Hank, and Peter can't help but think that it must have been the longest and most awkward road trip for both of them for several reasons and he bets they didn't stop for burgers... or traffic signals.
After about three days of lying in bed, totally unresponsive, Peter starts to fade in gradually, waking up for a few moments at a time, groggy and cotton-mouthed and so exhausted that he falls back asleep before he can seriously consider talking or getting up. The first time he wakes up Magneto is sitting in a chair at his bedside with his fingers laced together and his elbows on his knees, mumbling something that Peter can't understand. At first Peter thinks he can't understand because he's just so out of it but as he becomes a little more aware he realizes that the words are Hebrew and Magneto is praying. Peter isn't sure how he feels about that, except tired, but it would be rude to interrupt, so Peter lies perfectly still and lets the foreign syllables wash over him like waves. Magneto finishes with an "Amen", and looks up and notices Peter looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes but he doesn't say anything else.
Peter goes back to sleep.
Waking up is easy. Staying awake is like trying to swim while wearing cement shoes. The second time Peter wakes up he tries to get his point across to Lindy but it comes out as incoherent moaning and all it does is make her eyes all big and worried and that's not what he's going for. The third time Peter wakes up he tries to hold onto consciousness by shoving himself into a sitting position against the headboard and biting the inside of his cheek so hard that he tastes blood. He falls asleep anyway but it isn't for long and he wakes up in the same position but with his chin dipping toward his chest and Hank shaking him gently.
Peter reaches out and grabs his arm like it's a life preserver and mumbles, "'Mm awake. I'm awake," like Hank needs convincing. Then he asks the question that made him fight so hard to get here. "Did I miss it?"
It takes Hank a second, probably because Peter sounds like a chain-smoker trying to talk around a mouth full of sand, but then he understands. "The funeral is tomorrow," he says.
Relief floods him. Peter lets his hand drop away from Hank's arm and Hank starts to fill him in on how long he's been asleep and what's been happening. Frank and Magneto have been working together to take care of all the arrangements that Peter started but couldn't finish. Peter asks how that's been going and the answer is, "Surprisingly well." Hank's even caught them up late one night talking over a bottle of whiskey, and there's more to that story but Hank isn't telling.
"The bottle with the red label?" Peter asks.
"I think so."
"Did they at least share?"
Hank says, "I'm not much of a drinker," which means that they didn't.
Mom usually preferred mixed drinks: vodka tonics, Manhattans, or that one with the cherry in it, but she kept a bottle of the expensive stuff in the cabinet above the fridge for special occasions or for when she and Frank had to tolerate each other. Peter hopes Frank appreciated it.
Peter has Frank to thank for the fact that he hasn't been hauled off to a hospital or hooked up to an IV because Frank was around for Peter's teenage growth spurts plus the one time that Peter caught, like, the worst flu imaginable, all of which resulted in him sleeping for days at a time with no apparent ill effects. Still, this is the longest stretch Peter's ever slept before and he feels like he could go right back to sleep for another week or two and the extra weight he's been carrying makes a lot more sense now.
Peter's suddenly, uncomfortably aware that he's dressed in sweatpants and not the jeans and t-shirt he remembers wearing to the hospital, which means he slept through someone, or more likely a couple of someones, manhandling him into fresh clothes. Peter's mortified no matter who did the honors but he's especially mortified if one of those someones was his father.
"Dude, I need a shower," Peter says.
"Easy," Hank cautions as Peter starts to untangle himself from his sheets. "Your blood pressure has dropped. You're going to be dizzy when you stand up."
"'Kay," Peter mumbles as he scramble-flops to the other side of the bed and gets his feet on the floor and his body upright, more or less, as the black dots crowding his vision remind him that Hank knows his shit.
Hank tries to help but Peter waves him away in favor of crabbing along the wall toward the bathroom where he has to sit on the closed toilet lid for like, a while, cradling his spinning head. He sits there so long that Hank eventually nudges the door open and sets some clean boxers and a t-shirt and sweat pants next to the sink.
"Peter?"
"Give me a minute, okay?"
"I'll be out here if you need anything."
Right about then Peter panics because his brain has caught up to his body and he's remembering that Mom is really dead and he feels like a cooked noodle and he doesn't actually know how he's going to make it through tomorrow or if he can even stand long enough to shower, which is supposed to be why he came in here in the first place and he's just struck dumb by his own helplessness. He's sitting on a toilet in a basement, drained and weak and smelling like an old gym sock and trying to cry with his mouth open so that he doesn't make too much noise.
Hank gives him a long time, way longer than Peter would have expected, but he does finally knock at the door and say, "It's just me, okay?"
Then Hank's through the door and he doesn't look at all surprised by what he sees. Peter manages to straighten up a little, but he can't get his elbows off his knees and his hands are shaking.
"I don't think your body wants to be up yet," he says, and Peter could have told him that. "But if it's going to be then you need to give it something." He's holding out a glass of apple juice with a straw in it, and Peter is stupidly grateful for the straw because he doesn't think his hands are strong enough to hold the glass to his lips without dropping it. He drains the glass, surprised because he hadn't even felt thirsty.
"Thanks," Peter says.
"Do you think you could try to eat?"
"Shower first," Peter mumbles.
"Can you manage?" Hank asks doubtfully.
Then Peter pictures Hank in swim trunks and goggles and a t-shirt, helping him and says. "Dude... just... please no."
Hank ducks out of the room and tells him to call if he needs anything. Peter vows to himself never to need anything that badly, but he does appreciate it.
Eventually Peter hauls himself into the shower and stands under the spray until he's lobster-red and even more light-headed. Then he remembers that soap exists and somehow manages use it. The bathroom mirror is steamed up, and Peter doesn't care to know what he looks like. He knows just by looking down that he didn't sleep off thirty pounds, maybe two or three at most, but he's also aware that he has a good quarter-inch of patchy stubble on his jawline, which doesn't quite make him Rip Van Winkle but is more beard than he's had in his entire life. It's not until he goes searching that he realizes all of his razor blades are missing.
"Hank?" he tries.
He gets an immediate, "Yeah?"
"Uh, razor? Do you have one?"
A pause. "Just a minute."
Hank gets him an electric shaver, probably Frank's. He doesn't even know if Hank can grow a beard, when he's not, you know, blue.
Peter comes leaves the bathroom clean and dressed and feeling like he could fall face-down on the floor -any floor- and be unconscious in seconds.
Frank is waiting for him. He's sitting patiently on the sofa, reading the paper with his left ankle resting on top of his right knee, cool and casual. There's a sandwich on the table, and Peter knows right away that it's not one of Frank's creations.
Peter ignores the sandwich, staggers back to bed, sits on the mattress, and then can't stop himself from laying down. Someone changed the sheets while he was in the bathroom. They feel blissfully cool against his skin.
"Did you flush all of Mom's meds too?" Peter asks with his eyes closed.
He hears the snap of the paper being folded in half with practiced efficiency, hears Frank get up and knows that the paper is tucked under his left arm near his elbow. "Better safe than sorry," he says, "How are you feeling, kid?"
"Okay," Peter lies. Really it's only half a lie because at least he's clean now. "How is Lindy?" Peter asks.
"Hurting, but I know she'll feel a lot better once you're back on your feet."
"Did you call the paper and the, uh, church and stuff?"
"Everything's been dealt with for now. There are still a few pieces of paper that need your signature, but they can wait."
That's a relief. Peter knows he should go upstairs and look everything over. The pastor would have sent over a copy of the eulogy by now, and he's still got to figure out something to wear, and check on Lindy, and make sure Frank didn't forget anything. Frank's never been good with details. That was always Mom's deal...
"I know you'll probably tell me to go to Hell but I'm just going to throw this out there," Frank says. "You don't have to go to the funeral. You ran yourself ragged taking care of your mother and now it's caught up with you. There's no shame in that. Mary would understand."
"I'd never be able to live with myself," Peter says. "I'll make it," and as soon as he says that he feels his body go, Fuck, really? Alright, here we go... and his exhaustion recedes from an all-consuming smokescreen to a nagging itch behind his eyes. "On the other hand my suit might not make it..."
"Lindy already took your suit to the dry-cleaners to have it altered. You can wear one of my shirts. I think it's safe to say I've got a few pounds on you. You can wear the jacket unbuttoned." Frank shrugs. "You filled out some. It's not the end of the world, and Dr. McCoy thinks things will even out once you get caught up on your rest."
Peter's eyes stray to that fucking sandwich on the table, the sandwich that he isn't going to eat. Frank sees where his eyes have gone and he moves the plate to Peter's nightstand.
Peter scoots away from it like it's going to bite him. Frank notices. "Erik..." Frank says, leaning on the name, "...helped with some of the arrangements. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do, so I put him to work. It turns out he wasn't just asking to be polite."
Peter doesn't say anything.
"So, your dad's back in the picture," Frank says casually.
"You knew who he was?"
"I've known for a long time, even before all of that nonsense with the President. I recognized him when he showed up."
"How did that go?" Peter asks with trepidation, while thinking, Frank knew? but Peter supposes it does make sense. Frank was married to Mom for a long time and they probably talked about a lot of things that never got back to Peter. He imagines that the past few days must have been pretty tense for him, but then again Frank survived World War II as a combat medic. He was at Bastogne, for crying out loud. Maybe sharing a house with three mutants who have all tried to kill one another at some point in the last twenty years is a walk in the park comparatively speaking.
"We agreed that we could set aside our differences long enough to take care of more important things."
"Hank said you guys talked," Peter says.
Frank admits, "We did. Your father's an intelligent man, and a dangerous one. I do understand that. I don't condone what he's done and I don't agree with his methods but I believe that he has a point. I know that your mother never agreed with him but your mother didn't see the things I saw during the war. The world has a lot of problems. Mutants make a very convenient scapegoat, and there are far fewer of you than there are of us."
It's so strange to hear Frank draw that line when he knows Frank doesn't have a problem with mutants, maybe specific mutants, but not Peter, never Peter, not after Peter saved Lindy from being flattened by a car. Peter's never thought about mutants and humans in an 'us versus them' kind of way because everyone he was closest to growing up is human. But he gets that not everyone sees things the way he does. For example: Erik Lehnsherr.
"Lindy told me what they did to you, how they came for you. That is terrifying, Peter. That is the thing that keeps every parent awake at one-thirty in the morning, the fear that your child will be there one minute and gone the next, and your father has lived through that already."
Frank's talking about Erik's other family, his Polish wife and their little girl. Peter might biologically be Erik's son but he will never be able to replace what Erik's lost.
"You can stop calling him my father."
"You're his only living relative. Did you know that?"
"I had an idea," Peter confesses.
"He wanted to know more about you so I showed him some pictures of you when you were a kid, and do you know what happened?"
Peter doesn't want to hear this. "No."
"He cried. There he was, this man who's hunted Nazis all over the world, this ruthless mass murderer who tried to kill the president on national television, getting all misty-eyed over a photograph of a two-year-old with birthday cake in his hair."
It's ridiculous. Peter feels his cheeks get all hot with embarrassment because he doesn't want to picture Erik Lehnsherr the way that Frank is describing him. He never really let himself assume that he, or just the idea of him, would mean something to Erik. He doesn't know if he wants to mean something to Erik, even if Erik does mean something to him, he's just not sure what yet.
"He asked to talk to you, if you're feeling up to it. He made you a peace offering." Frank tilts his head toward the sandwich on the nightstand, sitting there on a plate from Mom's kitchen, little flowers printed in a pattern around the edge.
Peter shifts uncomfortably. "Are the two of you pals now?"
Frank gives him the 'don't be an asshole' stare-down. "No, the two of us aren't 'pals'. I said that I shared one of his opinions, not that I wanted to be tennis partners. You're a grown man. Who you decide to let into or shut out of your life is your business, and believe me, I completely understand your reasons either way, but you have to ask yourself what you can live with, and if you're not up for this I'll tell him to take a hike."
"The mass murderer? You'll tell him to take a hike? Jesus, Frank. With balls that big how do you find pants that fit?" But Peter's proud of him. Frank's always been kind of a hard-ass alpha male type and this seems exactly like the kind of thing that he'd do. Peter hated his man-of-the-house bullshit when Frank was married to Mom, but now Peter's a little grateful because he's definitely not up to being the man of the house right now. He doesn't know what he's up for right now, except more sleep, but there's a kind of messy, nervous energy running through his body, something that's not excitement and not terror but a heady mix of the two. Peter thinks about the decision that Mom made, to tell Erik, and he thinks about what Frank said, about figuring out what he could live with and if he shuts this door he wonders if it will ever open again.
"Okay," Peter sighs. He's looking down, fiddling with a fraying edge of the blanket. "Tell him it's okay," he says, but adds quickly, "I might be asleep..." and he's not faking the drowsiness in his voice but he's also aware that he's leaving himself an out, which he feels bad about but at this point it's just self-preservation.
"Okay," Frank says. The mattress adjusts itself when he gets up. Peter slides down to lie on his side and bunches the covers at his waist like a shield. He closes his eyes and hears the creak of the wooden stairs as Frank ascends. It's like a lullaby.
"Peter?"
Peter sucks in a breath because Erik Lehnsherr is suddenly standing over him like he's the one with the power of super speed and Peter catches that very brief moment when Erik thinks Peter's asleep and his expression is genuine and curious and maybe a little worried before he knows for sure that Peter's awake because his body tenses and his guard comes up and his expression hardens into a mask of control. Peter's dad goes away and the man leaning over his sickbed is Magneto and Magneto asks, "How are you feeling?"
Peter answers, "Like a jackass."
For some reason that does the trick and a little bit of Erik Lehnsherr peaks through. He says, stiffly, "I'm very sorry for your loss."
Peter swallows. "Thanks," he says, trying really hard not to think of his loss because he would really like to not break down in tears right now. "Sorry I was such a dick last time you were here."
"You have nothing to apologize for." Erik looks a little relieved, probably because Peter hasn't lashed out or tried to run away, not that Peter thinks he could if he tried, and not that he's thought of trying.
"I'm surprised you came back."
"I almost didn't," Magneto confesses.
Hearing that is like a sucker punch in the gut. Peter tries to hide how much it hurts.
Magneto continues, and he might as well be reading from a folded up sheet of notebook paper that he just pulled out of his pocket for how rehearsed his speech sounds. He's looking at Peter with the eyes of a kid on Christmas morning and Peter is the pair of ugly socks he just unwrapped. Or in Erik's case Hanukkah night. Nights. Eight of them. Peter read about it. Not like he speaks Hebrew or anything but he did pick up a book or two after finding out his dad was Jewish. Not big ones. They had pictures. Anyway, Erik's giving him the ugly sock look and Peter's lying there, sinking into the mattress a little more with every word while Erik says, "You've done nothing wrong." But it sure doesn't feel that way. Peter thinks the thing he did wrong was exist, and he can't really take that one back. "I deserve everything you've said to me and more. I look at you and I see the mistakes I've made, and the mistakes I might still make. I sense the plates in your leg from the injury I could have prevented. I see the laceration on your head and the bruises on your neck that wouldn't be there if I had protected you. I see you lying there exhausted from a burden I should have been there to help you bear. I've given you nothing but pain and grief," and on and on he goes with things like "everything I touch turns to ash," and something, something death and destruction until Peter's head is swimming and his stomach hurts and he's like, "Stop, stop, please, God, just stop."
Erik stops.
"I can't do this," Peter says. He hates to sound like a broken record but, really, he can't do this. "I don't want anything from you, okay? You're off the hook. If you want to hit the road and never see me again, it's fine. Go. You don't have to make excuses. Hi. I was there, not for all of it but I'd like to think I've seen you at your worst and I know you've got problems with a capital P and if you don't want to have anything to do with me that's fine. I barely want anything to do with me right now." While he's been talking Erik's brows have slowly drawn together into... not quite an angry scowl but something close to it. He looks like he wants to interrupt but Peter's talking too fast. "Maybe you're never going to own a World Greatest Dad mug but I'm not anybody's idea of a perfect son. I'm an asshole and a slacker and I talk too much and I make people uncomfortable and I'm obnoxious and I listen to music way too loud, just ask Frank, and right now I feel like I'm glued to the mattress and I look like ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack." Peter's breathing hard when he finishes and his head hurts. He squeezes his eyes shut.
"Peter?" Erik asks.
"Yeah?"
"I... Charles suggested... " Magneto's at a loss for words. This is something new. "I was only trying to take responsibility for my actions. I was only trying to apologize."
"Your apology sucks. Don't ever do it again. Can we just, you know, talk? Like normal people, or normal mutants or whatever? My head is splitting."
Peter shuts his eyes for a minute and then starts and nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels Erik's palm on his forehead.
"You don't have a fever."
That rules out one of, like, a billion reasons that Peter would have a pounding headache right now. "Yeah, I probably slept funny. Stiff neck. Crappy posture. Stress. Blow to the head. Some guy who won't shut up about what an asshole he is. Whatever. I've pretty much had a headache constantly for the past six months. Sometimes it's better. Sometimes its worse. The stitches don't help. Hey, what are you doing?"
Erik is prodding the area around Peter's stitches, pulling at the skin to see if it's holding together.
"I can take them out. I just need to find a pen knife or a razor blade."
"Yeah, well, you'll have to ask Frank where he hid them."
"No, I won't."
Oh, yeah, right.
Erik is gone maybe two minutes and Peter spends all of that time irrationally afraid that he's never going to see the man again or that he's going to fall back asleep and sleep through the funeral and wake up an old, old man or something so he bites the inside of his cheek to stay awake until Erik comes back.
"Did you help Frank find all of the drugs too?" Because of course he helped with the razor blades.
"Yes," Erik admits, settling back into his chair.
"Would it help if I told you I'm not going to kill myself?"
"It would."
"I wouldn't do that."
"You haven't been in the most stable frame of mind recently. We felt it was best to take precautions."
"I wouldn't do that," he repeats. Yeah, he'd toyed with the idea, just toyed with it, but no, just... no. He's so alarmed by the thought that he can't even keep his mind on it for very long. It slides away from him like he's trying to hang onto a greased rope. He kind of expects Erik not to let the subject go but he does with an, "Alright then. Shall we begin?" Erik brought a pen knife down (Peter guesses he's going to be using an electric shaver for a while) and he levitates it rather than holding the knife. "It's steadier this way," Erik explains.
"Okay," Peter says, and then he holds very, very still. Also he shuts his eyes.
"I won't cut you. You'll barely feel it," Erik assures him calmly.
He's right, of course. As Peter's lying there he reflects that Erik has had probably forty years or something to practice, and he thinks about Cairo and how freaked Scott and Jean were about having to use their powers, Scott especially, and at the time Peter had been... well, he'd been pretty focused on getting to Magneto but in the rare moments when he hadn't been obsessing about his long lost father he'd been maybe a little smug about his own proficiency. Now that the last few months have really sucked away his chutzpah and he wonders how Scott is doing, whether he's finally found the confidence he's been looking for.
"Did the professor ever find the kid? The newsboy?"
When Erik pauses his cutting to pluck a stitch out with his fingers. "Hold still," Erik says, using the excuse of beginning to cut again to buy himself a moment. "Not yet, but Charles continues to hold out hope."
Peter's stomach sinks. "I should have figured it out sooner. I just... I forgot all about him."
Erik pauses his cutting. "You can't be responsible for everyone, Peter."
"I know that."
"You seem to take responsibility for quite a lot."
Well, maybe he's trying to make up for his mass-murdering father, and if that's the case he's got a long way to go.
"Your mother thought that you blamed yourself unfairly for things beyond your control."
That's close to the mark, also just the mention of Peter's mom flips some switch inside him and just like that Peter's eyes are tearing up and his cheeks are burning and his stupid, stupid skin is too fair to hide it. Even in the dim light of the basement he knows that Erik can see.
Erik leans back, alarmed, and the knife floats away. Peter turns away from Erik and lets the tears fall on his pillow and tries to keep things quiet. It takes him a minute but eventually he has enough wind to say, "It just comes out of nowhere. Fuck. Sorry," he sniffs.
"It's quite alright."
"It sucks."
"It's grief." And, God, Erik would know, wouldn't he?
Peter lets out a shaky breath, "It gets better, right?"
"No," Erik says. "But you grow used to it."
Peter wills Erik not to touch him because Peter is afraid he's either going to slap him away or latch onto him like a baby monkey. Maybe Erik's just as unsure or maybe he's thinking of all the things he's had to grow used to because he just sits there, a grim, solid statue. After a while he says, "I misspoke earlier."
Peter doesn't think he can speak without sounding all stuffed up so he just grunts.
"I believe I gave you the impression that I was trying to excuse myself from being... from being your father," Erik stammers. "That isn't the case. You've grown into a fine man, no matter how you disparage yourself. I'm aware that you don't need a father the way that a child would, but I do want to protect you. The truth is that I'm frightened. Having you in my life means that once again I have something to lose, and that is more terrifying than having nothing at all." Erik marvels, "After all that's happened, after all I've done, I can't understand why I continue to receive such blessings." Peter can hear tears in Erik's voice. It means a lot to him that Erik thinks he's a good thing and Peter thinks it's like they've found themselves on the opposite side of the question, 'why do bad things happen to good people?' except maybe Erik's not a bad guy. Maybe there are no bad guys, just people doing things for their own reasons and they seem like good reasons at the time, like that guy Peter accidentally drowned in the Delaware River. Maybe he was just trying to make some money, send his kid to college or something, and then some mutant comes along and suddenly he's regretting the fact that he never took swimming lessons, and Peter absolutely feels like a bad guy for doing what he did but he never set out to kill anybody, and he definitely would have made a different choice if he'd known how that was going to turn out but he can't take it back and he knows deep down he's not bad, he just did what he thought was right at the time. He wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose and maybe Magneto -Erik- wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose either if his family hadn't been murdered and he hadn't been groomed by Nazis to be a living weapon and Peter can see he's trying to change, trying to make sandwiches, not war, but that's got to be an uphill battle, undoing however-the-hell-many years of conditioning that led him to believe that impaling things and people with metal was the best possible solution for all of life's problems.
Erik called him a 'blessing'. It reminds Peter of something. "The prayer was nice."
Erik looks surprised. "I wasn't sure you heard."
"I did," Peter says. "What do the words mean?"
"It's called the Mi Shebeirach. It's a prayer for healing."
"Oh," Peter says. He'd been hoping for more, like, to know what words his dad was speaking over him, but he guesses that would be asking Erik to open a part of himself he's not ready to share.
Peter reaches a hand up to his forehead. It feel's like Erik's gotten about half of the stitches and the skin seems to be holding together.
"You're going to have a scar," Erik observes. "But it should fade with time."
"I'm totally going to lie about where I got it."
Erik smiles... a little. Maybe it's not a smile, but it's not a frown.
Peter wipes his hands across his eyes. He can barely keep them open but he doesn't want to close them while his dad is still there. Any port in a storm, right? "I don't know how I'm going to make it through tomorrow," Peter says. "I don't suppose you have a prayer for that?"
"I do, but I think I know someone who can help. Jean and Charles will be here for the funeral tomorrow. Scott is coming with them, with your permission or course."
Peter doesn't give a shit where Scott goes, but he is worried about what's going to happen if the professor messes with his head.
"He won't harm you," Erik says. He adds quietly, "I wouldn't allow that."
Peter wonders what he and Erik are to each other. Technically they're father and son but Peter doesn't know if he'll ever want to call Erik 'Dad'.
"Not that I mind who shows up. Everybody's welcome, sure, but who's minding the store?" Peter asks.
"Kurt and Ororo are there, and Raven has gone back to the school. She asked me to pass along her regrets."
"Are you coming?" Peter asks. He can't imagine Erik's been to a lot of formal gatherings, so maybe a funeral is a good place for him to start. He'll have to work his way up to birthday parties.
"With your permission. I would like to pay my respects."
Ugh, so formal. "Yeah, it's fine," Peter shrugs.
Maybe it's not the express invitation that Erik was looking for, but he nods like maybe it's what he thinks he deserves, and it hangs between them in silence as Erik picks out the rest of Peter's stitches. It gets harder and harder for Peter to hold up his end of the conversation. He doesn't remember what they talk about but he remembers his dad's thumb on the edge of his scar, brushing away bits of broken stitches, and fingers in his hair, and the sound of a song to which he doesn't know the words.
Interlude
Peter has a dream that he wakes up at exactly eight in the morning, like there's an alarm clock in his head. His head is light and it feels like it's going to float off his shoulders when he swings his legs over the side of the bed. He finds his way to the bathroom, moving slow like the air in the room has turned to water, floating more than walking. He finds a black suit and tie hanging from a hook on the back of the door, and after he showers, he puts it on. He combs his hair. He finds black socks and polished shoes in his closet. At eight-thirty he climbs the stairs to the living room. Frank and Lindy are in the kitchen, talking softly. They look up when they see him. Lindy smiles and pulls him into a hug, but he can't smile back. Hank is there too, along with Scott and Jean. Jean's presence is soothing to him. She hooks her arm through his and suddenly Peter doesn't feel so lost. It doesn't even occur to him to ask why everyone is wearing black.
Frank and Lindy grab their keys and everyone heads out the door at eight-forty-five. Peter notices a few things that are out of the ordinary, like how his goggles are missing, and how everyone seems so quiet, then Jean sets her other hand on his arm and he forgets all about them.
They drive to church, the one Mom used to take him to as a kid, the one he still thinks about as the church, where he played one of the wise men in the Christmas pageant for two years in a row along with Craig Howard and Tommy Hinkle, before Tommy Hinkle's mom called Peter a bastard and Peter said he didn't want to go anymore.
There's no pageant now, just a bier with a casket covered in flowers and inside it a wax doll that looks like his mom. She's beautiful. She always was. Maybe that's why the other moms at the church hated her so much, not because of her weird kid.
Peter sits in the front pew with his sister on one side and Jean on the other. Scott and Hank are a few rows behind them. Peter knows the church is filling up because he can hear people filtering in one at a time or in small groups over the sound of the organ playing.
Peter doesn't recognize the pastor who comes to the pulpit to talk about his mom. He must have joined the church after Peter left. He does seem to have known his mom though, which is strange because he didn't think she went to church anymore. When the pastor is finished speaking Lindy gets up and unfolds a piece of paper on the pulpit. Then she says a lot of really nice things about Mom, even though she's in tears almost as soon as she starts. Peter's holding a crumpled tissue in his own fist, but Jean doesn't let him dwell on that too much. When Lindy is done Peter wraps his right arm around her shoulders and pulls her close so she can sob into his lapel.
Three or four of Mom's colleagues and friends get up to say a few words, and when that's done the pastor asks for the family to come up to the front of the church so that the gathered can pay their respects. Peter and Lindy stand by the casket, and Peter starts to feel very strange without Jean's arm in his, like he's trying to sleep but someone has taken away his blanket and he's cold without it.
Now that he's standing at the front of the church he can see that Mom drew a packed house. That's what happens when young people die. He recognizes kids from Lindy's high school and their parents, nurses and doctors from the hospital where mom used to work, patients that Peter recognizes from the chemo ward, old family friends and neighbors. The Obermans are there, sitting beside Mrs. Szewc and just in front of Mr. and Mrs. Baird.
There are other faces that Peter recognizes right away, including Charles Xavier. "I know how difficult this has been for you, Peter, and what a comfort you were to your mother in her final days. We are here for you, all of us." Peter nods. He understands the words but they don't really mean much to him.
The next person in the receiving line is Erik Lehnsherr. He clasps Peter's hand in both of his. Maybe Erik says something and maybe he doesn't. Peter's busy staring down at Erik's hands, which are strong and warm, folded around Peter's hand like he doesn't want to let it go, but he also can't hold it forever.
After all of the mourners have filed past, Jean collects Peter on her arm and they leave the church for the cemetery.
Mom's plot is all on its own under a big pine tree, manicured grass all around. Mom was an only child and her father died a long time ago in a place far from here, and her mother wanted to be buried alongside him, so for now, Mom's alone.
Peter, Frank, and Hank act as pallbearers and share one side of the casket. Eric Lehnsherr, Mr. Oberman, and Mr. Baird take the other side. Peter thinks that this should mean something to him but he can't decide what.
There are more words at the graveside. Peter feels himself growing weary as the service drags on, and it's the kind of tiredness that involves more than his body, like his nerves are rubbed raw from feeling too much, but as long as Jean holds on to his arm he feels like he can keep going, through a prayer he knows by heart.
After the burial some of the guests return to Mom's house, which is now Peter's house, for a subdued reception. Peter sits on the sofa in his living room while guests file past, talking in hushed voices. The bottle with the red label is out of the cabinet and making its way around the room. Someone sets a fresh glass of it on the coffee table in front of Peter. There are two cubes of ice floating in the amber spirits, then there are none and the liquid in the glass is clear on the surface and the glass itself is sitting in a pool of condensation. Peter feels confused and wonders where the time has gone.
The dream ends where it began. He's sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling off his tie and jacket. Jean's helping him with his shoes. He's so tired but he has a question for her, and it's important, "When am I going to wake up?"
"When you're ready."
He curls up on the bed, knees to his chest, and falls asleep.
To be continued...
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