A Damaged Perfection
Chapter Forty Four
November 5th , 2007
The funeral was one of the longest days of Georgie's life. She simply did not have the strength to be perfect. She can't take care of anyone else. She can't make things better. She held Logan's hand and thanked God that she has this man by her side.
They sat in the front row at the church. On the other side of her sat Maxie, ready to catch Georgie if she collapsed into tears. But Georgie had sobbed herself to sleep two nights already and the tears have already ran dry.
She stared at the two oversized photos: Frisco and Felicia. Somehow Anna got a recent photo of her father. Georgie couldn't believe the lines on his face, the white in his hair. All her photos are nearly two decades old.
No matter how hard she tried, which was not very hard at all because it is not in her nature to give in to malice, Georgie could not hate Frisco. She just missed him. Though she had never really known him, she missed him terribly. There must have been something amazing in him, she thinks, to make her mother leave all of them for him.
By the time the priest finished the service, Georgie is jealous of her dead father. He had gotten to spend more time with her mother, she bet, in this last few years than Georgie had.
She doesn't know what to think or feel. She doesn't have any school book that will tell her how you become okay again after you lose both your biological parents in one day. If not for Logan and Maxie and Mac, she would curl into a ball and just hide beneath her covers.
She knows she needs to be strong. But she can't stop thinking: now I will never get my perfect family.
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Maxie would have liked to rip the photos of Felicia and Frisco to shreds. There are moments when she loves them- they are crazy, bold, bad ass screw ups like her, after all- but there are other moments when she despises them. All her and Georgie have now are lousy pictures of beautiful people who had loved them but hadn't had the strength to raise them. They don't even have bodies to bury. Those were lost in the last fatal battle south of the border.
Mac gave a eulogy for her mother. In every word, Maxie heard his love for her. She wanted to yell at him, right there in the middle of the church, "How can you still love her? HOW? She didn't choose you. She didn't choose any of us. Our love was wasted on her!"
But Maxie didn't say that. Because she really couldn't believe it. Love was too precious, too rare, giving it could never really be in vain.
Only since she met Cooper did she know that though. If not for him coming into her world, and healing her heart, she would have believed that love was a cruel trick of the Devil meant to make you hope, just so that hope could be yanked away. But love wasn't that, not for her, not anymore. Loving Cooper was a kinda faith that she could hold in two hands. As long as she had his love, she would believe both her and her baby would be okay.
She knew there were people waiting for her to cause a scene during the ceremony, and a part of her really wanted to tell all the good people of Port Charles what she really thought of the choices of both Frisco and Felicia, but she didn't because, all during the service, Cooper held her hand and kept her turbulent emotions from boiling over.
All she could think, when they walked out of the church, was : I will have my perfect family.
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Later, Maxie was in her old bedroom, hiding from all the mourners packed into Mac's house, when Sam walked in.
Smiling, Sam teased "Rocking four inch heels at a funeral while sporting a baby bump. Got to give you props, kid."
"My feet are killing me. But these shoes are worth it."
"All right," Sam said, closing the door, "we can't drink away your blues. We can't get stoned and forget the world is messed up and that sometimes we get parents who don't stick around. But there is one pleasure still left for knocked up chicks like you: snarking about the array of ugly ass clothes those old biddies downstairs came here in. Did you see what Amanda Barrington was wearing? Seriously? Fugly."
Maxie laughed. It felt good to feel something other than rage or loss for the first time in days.
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"The Jackal is without words," Spinelli told Georgie. Logan and Cooper were sent on an errand to the grocery story by Mac, giving Spinelli his first chance to speak to Georgie privately since hearing that two of her parents had died.
Georgie hugged him. "It's okay. You don't have to say anything. Just being here is enough."
"But...but...but...I should have some words of wisdom for you since you have always dispensed to me such unfailingly wise advice. I wish I could have had the honor of making the acquaintance of your parental life givers because I'm sure I would have found them as wonderful to be around as I do their daughter."
She gave him a small smile. "Thank you."
Serena and Christina Baldwin walked over and offered her their condolences.
"Thank you both for coming."
Serena hugged her. "Of course, we came. You're family."
Logan loved Georgie and that was all the Baldwins needed to know. She was one of their own, and they would take care of her like one.
"Mom wants you and Logan to come over for dinner this weekend," Christina said. "And she won't take no for an answer. Believe me, I tell her no all the time. She never takes it."
"I'll check with Logan."
"He pretty much is a sucker for Lucy," Serena said "so I'm gonna take that as a yes."
And though her mother and birth father are dead, Georgie could not die herself. She will make plans for tomorrow and she will endure.
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Later when Logan comes back to the house, he is told by his sister that Georgie is up in the attic. He finds her there digging through old boxes until she pulls out a picture. It shows Felicia twelve years before, with Maxie and Georgie smiling next to her. They are all wearing plastic tiaras.
Georgie gave Logan a small smile. "We were at the Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico. Did you know my mother was a princess?"
"You're kidding?"
"An Aztec princess. I always thought she was so beautiful...right out of a fairytale. I thought I was the luckiest little girl because who else got a mommy who is real royalty? Only me and Maxie got to be her daughters and I was always proud of that."
Logan walked over, crouched down in front of her, and then raised his thumb to stroke away a tear from her cheek.
Georgie said, "I know my mother loved me. See?" She nodded at the picture. "She's happy. Mac snapped this. We were all there and happy. I didn't imagine that. We were perfect, for one moment. I had forgotten, until today. We did get our perfect moment." She pressed the photo into Logan's hands. "Here. I want you to take this. Keep this at your place."
"No, no, I can't. You should put this in your room."
"I want you to keep it. I gave Maxie a photo album for her new place. I told her that it contained the best moments of our past and that I hoped the best moments of her future would be spent with Cooper and her baby. Well this is my personal best moment of my family's past, and you are the man I want to have the best moments of my futures with. Keep this..." She smiled shyly. "Who knows? Maybe someday we will live together and I'll have my best past and best future and best friend all together in one place."
Logan gently kissed her. "Whenever you are ready for that, I'm right here."
Coming up next: New Year's Eve
