Chapter Twenty One – Feel
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While Starling's new case - straightforward arrest on solid forensic evidence - was a public relations dream, Mapp's was turning out less than satisfactory.
She was tired, angry and full of countless other grievances as she pulled into her part of Arlington. Most of her day had been spent in court, presenting evidence on the Lecter trial. On some mysterious plea, he had been absent from the stand – something Mapp was secretly grateful for. The doctor and the agent had yet to come face to face. Ardelia Mapp was not entirely sure how she would react when they did. The intense anger that had burned towards him, during Starling's kidnap, had not yet faded, even with her friend's return. A small part of her worried that she might launch herself across the witness box and try to strangle him, but the ironic little voice in her head told her that the security guards would shoot her before she harmed a hair on the convicted serial killer's head.
Turning into the street that housed her duplex, Mapp pushed her homicidal thoughts aside. She had always striven to keep bad thoughts away from her home. She knew she must compartmentalise to stay sane. Home was a place for warmth and family – not for the sort of things she dealt with at work. Nor anger, or murder, or Lecter, for that matter. Mapp tried not to bring it home, even inside her own mind. She knew plenty of homes which had been ruined by it. At thirty-five, now, her fellow agents were beginning to fall victim to that stereotype of the FBI Agent approaching middle age; distanced from their families and loved ones. The people they fought to protect could not understand the darkness they saw. The distance from their family pushed them back to work. It was a self-perpetuating circle.
Ardelia Mapp reigned in her bad mood.
Mapp spotted Starling's car as she pulled up to the duplex and her frown deepened. The Mustang was supposed to be in the shop to get a handbrake or an engine or something Mapp did not understand fixed. Starling had been hitching rides all week. Mapp's friend had told her that she wouldn't get the car back until Thursday. Clearly, plans had changed. Mapp inched her car further onto the driveway, careful to avoid Starling's panelling. The Mustang had been backed out of the garage and parked, rather haphazardly, across the entire concrete driveway. Half the bodywork shone, as if it had been washed and polished, while the other half was still marked with small specks of oil and mud, from the field it had been found in, on that fateful night over three years ago.
Mapp parked alongside the old 'Stang, taking care not to ding her mirrors. She stepped out of her rather more dishevelled ride and began to pick her way across their parched front lawn. Though she tried to stop it, as she made her way across the lawn her thoughts returned to work.
Two more days and Lecter would take the stand on his final day in court. The dates had been rushed due to the public nature of the case. If Lecter pleaded innocent, or was ruled insane, then they would be stuck in the docks for at least another six months. Mapp grimaced to herself. She hardly expected Lecter to bounce up on front of the judge, plead guilty and offer to prove his sanity through a series of psychiatric tests. But it was a sorry truth that, if he didn't do that, there would be no way he would get the death penalty. And there would be no way she could sleep easy. Anything less than a death sentence was, in Mapp's opinion, no justice for what he had done to her friend.
Her friend. Mapp snorted softly to herself. She and Starling were not exactly on 'friend' terms at the moment. An argument of earlier that day had solidified the growing unrest between them.
Mapp had gone down to Starling's basement office just after lunchtime. Starling, had spent the morning interviewing a suspect on another case she was running with Vale. When Mapp entered, she was buried up to her nose in paperwork and not in the best of moods. With minimal build-up, Mapp had asked her to testify at the Lecter trial. Starling balked at the idea. 'Can't' was the word she had used. Over and over again. She 'can't' do it, 'just can't'.
Mapp was not deluded, she knew it was going to be hard on her friend, but she honestly could not see why Clarice wouldn't consider taking the stand. Starling was so strong in every other aspect of her life. The Clarice Starling that Mapp had known, before Lecter, would have taken the stand. She would have done anything to send a guilty man down. Sometimes, when Mapp and Clarice were together - eating dinner, or watching a movie, or just complaining heartily about the FBI's dubious hot drinks - it seemed as if Starling had never left. She seemed just the same. Other times, like that moment, down in Starling's makeshift office, they just stared at each other like strangers.
When Starling had refused, Mapp had just looked away, then back again, fumbling for words.
"The Clarice Starling I know would want justice." She had eventually managed.
Starling had just sighed and turned away, back to her paperwork
"You can convict him without me."
"But it'll take much longer." Mapp moved had moved closer, then, taking a different tact. "Clarice, I get that it's gonna hurt right now, but in the long run this is best. If you don't, then you're gonna look back and wish you'd faced up to your demons."
Trying a guilt-trip on her friend had not gone so well.
"My demons?" Starling's face had twitched slightly, and for a moment Mapp thought she might be about to cry, but instead the corners of her mouth tightened in an almost snarl. "You don't know a damn thing about my demons."
The comment had struck Mapp over the face like a hard slap. In a single moment, Starling had revealed just how distanced they had become. The bubble they had been living in since the re-capture had popped. Their friendship was slipping through its own fractures and it was all that monster's fault. Mapp felt a surge of pure and unadulterated hatred towards the man she had never met, but who had affected her life in so many ways. How could Starling not want to get revenge? If it was her, Mapp decided, she would march right over to the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Centre and strangle him in his cell. With her bare hands.
Mapp walked away from Starling's Mustang and up to her front door, digging hopefully in her pocket for keys. As she did so, she looked over to her right. The garage door was propped open, leading into Starling's half of the duplex. For a moment, Mapp wavered. She could go next door and face up to her friend, or she could lurk in her half of the duplex all night. Common sense won over. It was best to address the argument right away, not let the bad feelings fester.
Mapp hopped down her front steps and strode back across the lawn. Ducking beneath the creaky garage door, she walked the oil stained concrete, the noise of her footsteps slapping ghost-like on the walls. Near the back of the garage, a door opened into the laundry room of Starling's half of the duplex. Also open. Mapp slid through that door too, and then on through into the kitchen, where she tripped across the first sign of her friend; discarded sandals. She searched through the kitchen and living room for her housemate. No Starling. On through the hall to the bedroom. She called once. Still, no Starling. Mapp turned, noticing the bathroom door was closed. She paced over and knocked.
"Hey, Clarice?"
No answer. Mapp felt a ripple of caution ride through her nervous system. Starling wasn't the type to do something stupid… was she?
"Clarice?" Mapp tapped again.
Again no one answered. Mapp hammered on the door.
"Clarice, you in there, girl? You okay?" she twisted the handle, but it seemed locked. "Clarice!"
"God – yes – damn it, Ardelia, I'm in here!"
Mapp halted, fist mid-hammer.
"…Are you okay?"
A short silence, then;
"The door's open, come in."
"It's locked."
"They handle sticks. Wiggle it up first."
Mapp did so, and the doorknob turned freely. She pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside.
Starling was seated, cross-legged, in the empty bath, fully clothed with one of her sleeves rolled up to reveal a jagged gash on her forearm, near the elbow.
"What the hell?" Mapp sprung forwards and knelt by the side of the bath.
"It's okay," her friend started to speak, but Mapp overrode her.
"Sh… God, what the hell, Clarice? What'd you do, girl?"
"It was the car, Dee!" Starling's eyes flamed and Mapp, catching her friend's gaze, looked away. "Jeez… It was the catch on the hood. I thought it was oiled fine, but it was a bit rusty. Damn thing sprung back and got me. I was just too slow to get my goddamn hand out the way."
Starling wrenched her arm away from Mapp as she reached forwards to investigate the cut.
"Clarice… m'sorry."
Feeling a bit embarrassed, aren't we, thought Mapp to herself, cringing inwardly. It was a mark of how long they had been apart that she had even considered her friend to be capable of such a thing. The Clarice Starling she knew and loved would never do something so stupid, no matter what she'd been going through. Mapp felt like hitting her head against the wall. Suggesting Starling might cut herself was like openly admitting she knew nothing about her friend; that she saw Starling as a victim, like everyone else.
"I'm not that pathetic, Delia." Starling's voice had calmed slightly, anger fading into sadness. "Not yet, anyways."
Mapp moved closer to check the wound and, this time, Starling let her. She peeled the towel Starling had been pressing against it away. Sticky with blood, it pulled the jagged broken skin further apart, and Starling swore darkly.
"Damn, Clarice." The cut was longer than Mapp had expected, though not as deep. "You gotta knack of finding new and interesting ways of hurting yourself don't ya?"
Starling pursed her lips and pulled a face, but did not elaborate with words. Mapp busied herself with fetching her meagre medical supplies from the kitchen cabinets of her own half of the duplex. She returned, wiping a layer of dust from the packaging of some bandages, to find Starling picking the scabbing blood from one end.
"Hey!"
"It's got dirt in it!"
"Give it here."
An industrial size bottle of iodine, courtesy of Mapp's mother, was produced from Mapp's back pocket. She dabbed some onto a paper towel, then pressed it against Starling's arm.
"OW! What the hell is that?"
"Iodine, my mama swore by it." Mapp grabbed her friend's forearm as Starling tried to wrench it from her grasp.
"Well your mama was a sadist!"
Mapp closed her fingers over Starling's wrist and held her still.
"My mama was a nurse for twenty five years. And she would tell you exactly the same as what I'm gonna tell you – shut up and stay still!"
"…Ow!"
"Stop being such a cry-baby."
"But you're doing it on purpose!"
"Am not. Now stop squirming."
She cleaned out the cut and stretched some butterfly steri-strips over the open wound, pulling the broken edges of skin together.
"It's not gonna fall off, you know." Starling grumbled, bad temperedly.
"Yeah, well it could get infected. So, help out."
Mapp tried to ignore the cantankerous glares she was receiving. Punctuated by only a few more 'ow's and 'get off's from Starling, Mapp spent the next five minutes wrapping gauze over the top and taping it in place. There we go, Mapp smiled proudly, dare any germs to take that on!
"There we go, Superdoc to the rescue!" Mapp knelt up again, feeling pleased with the integrity of her bandaging.
Starling's gaze finally softened slightly. A twitch of a smile appeared at the left hand corner of her mouth.
"Ta, Superdoc."
Mapp felt her best friend's eyes slide over her face and noted a sadness that had filled them. Pulling her coat off, she climbed into the tub alongside Starling. There were towels lining the sides, so it wasn't that cold, but it was still quite an odd place to be sitting, even for Starling.
"Honey, are you really okay?"
Starling didn't look okay. But then, thought Mapp, it was a stupid question really. She wouldn't be okay if what had happened to Starling had happened to her. Mapp swallowed and looked away. She wasn't a shrink – how was she possibly supposed to help?
Starling nodded, then bit her lip and shook her head slightly.
"Yes. I mean, I'm not okay, but I will be. It's just…" another scrunched up facial expression. "I'm working on it. Yeah?"
Mapp smiled slightly. So Starling.
"I'm sorry about earlier."
Blunt and ever so Starling. Mapp smiled.
"Me too."
"Good. Then we're friends and we can stop biting at each other's necks then?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
"See you got your car back." Mapp offered, as conversation.
Starling nodded and smiled.
"Got the call earlier, at work. Vale gave me a ride over to the repairs place."
Mapp nodded, and wondered whether she should ask about Vale. Did Starling expect her to ask? I mean, he had been her partner on the Lecter case – they had gotten pretty close over those weeks. Mapp missed his enthusiasm a little, now she was working on her own. Okay, well, maybe more than a little. Though she had not realised it at the time, Vale had shouldered a lot of her stresses. Without him there to back her up, she found herself feeling distinctly alone against the bureaucracy. Mapp decided she should ask about Vale. It's what a friend would do. It wasn't too stalker-ish, or girl-with-crush-ish. Not as long as she kept it casual. Nonchalant.
"So, how's Vale doing?"
Damn. Mapp cursed herself. As soon as the words left her lips, she realised they had sounded too casual, too nonchalant.
Starling lifted her gaze ever-so-slightly, eyes dancing playfully around Mapp's face. Mapp felt the tips of her ears warm slightly and was glad of her dark skin that hid the beginnings of a blush.
"Oh, you know, he's okay." She replied, lightly.
Mapp got the distinct impression that Starling might be having an internal laugh at her expense so she stood up to change the direction of the conversation.
"So do you need help fixing up that car or what?"
The laughter in Starling's eyes faded slightly, and she took a slow breath, looking up at Mapp who stood over her.
"Dee, I've kinda wanted to talk for a sec about something." Her eyes were serious. "I've made a decision." A little flutter of insecurity passed through her deep amber eyes "About the pregnancy."
Mapp felt a pang of empathy for her old friend. She knew how hard it was going to be, for Starling to make this decision she had to make. Deep inside her, a tiny, tiny bundle of cells had begun to divide; first two, then four, then sixteen. Those cells then differentiated into skin and organs, eyes and fingernails. Then the heart had started beating and the embryo had became a fetus proper. A tiny human. Still tiny enough, at almost five months, thought Mapp. Starling's belly had not even begun to swell. A gentle curve below her navel, between her hip bones, was the only evidence. The nausea had faded weeks ago. She still had time. Mapp knew that taking the step would be hard on her, though. While logical, and while Starling must know it to be the right course of action, Mapp knew her friend could never take a life without being sure it was the only real course of action. It must have been tearing her up inside.
Mapp sat back down, opposite Starling, and took her hand.
"I'll be there. I'll come to the clinic, be there, whatever, okay? You know that, right?"
Starling looked up, grateful. Mapp reiterated her comforting words.
"I'll be there."
"Ardelia," Starling squeezed Mapp's hand, "I'm not getting rid of the baby."
The words 'What', closely followed by 'the Hell!' verged on flying violently from Mapp's lips, but she restrained herself. Mapp swallowed, trying to hide her emotions, but they spilled out onto her face anyway, her eyebrows tightening together. Mapp had known Starling for years, ever since they barely qualified as adults, back at Quantico. She knew Starling was strong-willed and determined, but she couldn't do this. She couldn't raise a kid – that kid – by herself. Starling had never even looked after nieces or nephews before, how was she supposed to know the first thing about looking after children? And everyone knew exactly how and where that kid had come from.
Eventually, Mapp shook her head, and spoke.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Starling raised an eyebrow.
"Pardon?"
"Don't pardon me, girl!"
"What, then?"
"I'm just saying, maybe you should think on it a bit." Mapp had released her friend's arm and sat back against her own side of the bathtub. "You know, get yourself rested up and…well."
"And sane?" there was a terse edge to Starling's voice, thought Mapp could tell she was fighting to appear in complete control.
"That ain't what I meant."
"Sure it was."
"Clarice!"
Starling's frown hardened.
"I'm sorry if it's not what you wanted for me, but, like you said, it's my choice."
"Clarice," she didn't know what to say. "Clarice, this is not something you can take lightly."
Starling laughed.
"Lightly? You think I'm taking this lightly? I've barely thought of anything else for the last few weeks!" Starling took a deep breath and then let it out again, slowly. She composed herself before continuing. "I know what I'm doing. I've made my choice."
"That thing-" Mapp started.
"My child," Starling corrected her, patiently and without anger.
Mapp swallowed back her discomfort and plunged ahead with her argument.
"That child is gonna be different that other kids. And yeah, because of where it came from. Don' try and tell me people are gonna treat him or her the same. You saw the papers when you came home – you saw what the press were like. Imagine what will happen when the eventually find out not only that you're pregnant, but that you're keeping it?"
"I never said it was an easy choice." Starling explained, in the same annoyingly calm voice. "I just said it was the one I had chosen."
"Well I'm so glad you've thought this through!"
"You know, Dee, if it was you who had gotten yourself into this mess, I would be the first one there, to stick by your side and support you – whatever choice you made. That's what friends do, Dee."
"Yeah, only you didn't get yourself into this mess, did ya?"
"Oh, I think I- ." Starling cut herself off, paused for a moment, and then swore in frustration. She threw her arms akimbo then clambered out the bathtub and began to pace agitatedly across the bathroom. After a minute, her breathing had slowed again and she stopped, looking over at Ardelia, who was still sitting amongst the towels in the tub.
"Listen, I have fought for people's approval in many areas of my life, Ardelia. I have tried and tried to please people so many times, but on this one… I'm not budging. Sorry."
Mapp blinked, not quite able to believe the speech that had just spilled out her friend's mouth.
Starling stepped closer to the bath. Her eyes were still blazing, but they were not as angry as they were before. It was conviction shining through now. She reached out to take Mapp's hand.
"I'm telling you this not to drive you away, but to help you understand. What happened to me over the last three years is a matter between me and him. You will never understand how I feel about that time, and I don't think I could even try to explain it to you."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
Mapp felt her eyes prick with tears, her throat with heat.
"I'm so sorry, Clarice, I tried. I tried to find you. I've been trying so hard, but I just couldn't get there in time."
For a moment, Starling looked as if she was about to cry too, then she knelt beside the bath and took Mapp's hand.
"Come with me."
She led her into her own bedroom, dusty and warm in the late summer evening. Mapp's housemate let go of her hand near the bed, then crossed to the other side of the room alone. Flicking on the TV, she ducked down to the cabinet and pulled out a DVD disk. Halfway through pushing it in, she stopped and turned around.
"I know this is hard for you, because you feel responsible. And I know until you believe it yourself, me saying this is useless, but I'm gonna say it anyway…" she paused and fixed Mapp with an intense stare. "Nothing that happened to me was your fault, Ardelia."
Starling pushed the disk into the machine, took the remote, and walked back over to the bed. Motioning to Mapp to sit beside her, Starling arranged herself in a comfortable position. Mapp watched her face contract as she searched the remote, looking no doubt for the 'on' button. Despite the tensions between them, she felt a smile inside of her. Starling had always been useless with technology.
"Here." She took the remote and switched the TV on, then sat beside her friend.
A grainy image appeared on the screen, at the pressing of another button, and dark sepia shadows swelled and faded across the field of vision. An ultrasound. Mapp felt herself grow reverently still. She could not make out a baby amongst the many shadows.
"Where..?"
Starling moved forwards, to kneel on front of the screen. As she searched, she spoke.
"I got it done this afternoon, after I picked up the car. Went down to A&E and asked for one there. It only took twenty minutes." She pointed to a light shape near the upper left of the screen. "There."
A blurred shape was indeed visible at the tips of Starling's outstretched fingers. The view panned in another direction and Starling moved her finger to highlight the fetus again. It was obvious from this angle. On the screen, a tiny flickering shape was present. It could have been a heart beating, but Mapp couldn't tell. It pulsed steadily amongst the shifting indefinite shadows of the background. Starling's hand moved before the camera shifted, to point to it again as the ultrasound panned to a different angle. Her knowledge of the camera's movements made Mapp wonder wondered if she had watched the clip through a few times.
"Don't ask me what way up she is, but that's her."
For a beat or two of time, Mapp forgot the situation and felt a stir of wonder inside of her. That thing, that fuzzy shape, was a human being. A 'her', a female, a girl, a tiny baby girl. She turned to Starling to say something, but found her friend watching the screen raptly. Starling's eyes were not filled with maternal longing, or any inkling of sappy emotion, but there was something lurking there – a fierce protectiveness – that Mapp had never seen before.
"I can't explain it, Dee. I don't think it can be explained. I never did want kids and I don't expect that I've changed all that much. I'm not gonna get all sappy over little baby-gros and booties and shit. I don't feel duty-bound or nothing. I just feel that baby inside of me. I feel a connection to a person. Not a thing – a person. It just is."
"Just is?"
"Told you I couldn't explain it any good," Starling said, with a strained apologetic smile. "Now is right. I feel it."
"That feelin' again, huh?"
"Hmm."
Mapp couldn't understand it. But, with a heavy sigh, she realised that she was going to have to make a choice herself. To question Clarice's decision, inevitably driving them apart – or to accept her choice, even though she could not understand it. Whatever Mapp thought about the matter of keeping the child, she knew that Clarice Starling was perfectly sane.
"An' you believe you're doin' right?"
They held each other's gaze for a full thirty seconds.
"Yeah."
"Then I'm behind ya."
Starling walked back over and sat on the bed beside her.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I hear that's what friends do."
They embraced, Mapp relishing the closeness.