7
She came around to visit Peter once every month.
May Parker was the kind of soul you'd meet at the waiting room of a subway station after you'd missed your train back home.
While you sat dejected on the metallic bench, after a long shitty day where everything went against you, she would slide up next to you – not in a bad way, more in a sweet lady looking for directions kind of way - first striking up a meaningless conversation, but then showering you with a string of warm words that you thought you probably didn't deserve, but desperately needed. Then, with those long veiny motherly hands, she'd clasp yours in reassurance while her crinkling eyes would look at you with such intensity that it could split you in half and pluck the most vulnerable, child-like parts of you from your shameful depths. In other words, she was one of those rare human beings that made people around her feel like a million bucks. Unfortunately sometimes, at the detriment of her own self.
I met May one day - late into the evening because I was out in the city with a few friends after class - in the hallway outside my room in the Compton Building. She was seated on the mini-sofa, under the blinking lights of the corridor with her knitting needles out, unironically sewing new buttons into a white office blouse. When I sat down next to her, she dropped her sewing into her carry handbag before giving me a hug, immediately flooding me with that warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach as only she could. We talked for a while, mostly about me and my goings-on. How well had I settled in? How was Uni life as opposed to school life? Did I have new friends already? All questions that would have felt like mindless padding from someone else's mouth, but from May, they felt like genuine important things worth talking about. "What about the Compton?" she asked, and I answered that it was a great place to live, great price-range, except a bit lonely at times. She chuckled and said not as lonely as Queens was without us kids hovering around and I smiled. I did wonder at that point, why she was sitting out here, on the dilapidated sofa in the corridor, knitting buttons into her shirt, while the door to her nephew's room was locked, and the lights were turned off inside because I could see it through the glass look-in.
"Where's Peter?" I asked.
Her face fell the instant the question left my mouth, "I don't really know. Usually, I let Pete know a day or two in advance whenever I'm dropping by. I had a nice conversation with him yesterday on the phone, and today – well, today, he's just gone missing. I hope he hasn't forgotten about me dropping in. He can be quite absent-minded sometimes."
She tried to put together a smile at the end of it but that didn't stop me from feeling sorry for the poor woman. Oh jeez, I thought to myself, this must have been hard for her. No, scratch that, it must have been fucking terrifying. To not know where your only living relation, your nephew, was so late into the evening and why he wasn't at home, especially after all the crap that had happened to the Parker family already, just seemed bad, and terribly upsetting. I asked her if she had any idea where Peter might be if he wasn't at home and meeting her right now.
"Honestly, knowing Peter, and the kind of genes he inherits, he's probably out there saving the world," she said waving her hand at the nearest window, "That's what 'scientist' types like him and his father are always up to aren't they. Sometimes I'm glad he didn't turn out like Ben and me. He'd be too stupid to keep up with today's world"
I told her she was selling herself way too short, woefully so, but she just responded in kind with a weak smile. I tried my best to invite her into my apartment and spend her time in there with me if she was going to wait for Peter but again she refused my hospitality. She said it was alright, it might be pretty late into the night before he turned up anyway, so she would be leaving in a short while. It broke my heart to leave her seated, so alone and without company, but I needed to change out of my inebriated clothes and get some work done for the next day's class. Halfway to my door, I stopped because May had just called my name and when I turned around to face her she told me she was rooting for me. I didn't really know what she meant by that, but it seemed like she was talking more to herself than to me. She told me Peter always talked about me at home, ever since that prom night ages ago. I blushed a little when she said that he might actually like me but was too afraid to admit it openly, or even to himself. She said that ever since Gwen's death, he'd been very different and very distant, almost like his head was elsewhere. I don't know why but everything she said only made me angry.
She left the place that night without seeing her nephew. After I settled into my room having taken a long hot shower, I saw her get into a dirty yellow taxi from my tiny window and drive off into the huddle of the speeding traffic, back over the bridge to the other side of town.
That the poor lady had made such an effort and gone to such pains for her monthly trip, only to then have gone back home empty-handed with a boatload of worries, just cut a sad image in my head. But I persevered through the night, sleepless, working through a few assignments under the yellow lamplight, listening to Mercury Vista songs on my earphones, feeling like I was surfing the blue waves of some tropical heaven, oblivious to my surroundings and the time slipping by like the thoughts in my head as the night extended into further darkness. It was way past midnight hour when I heard a loud clanking of metal railings out on the fire escape, and slipping my earphones off of my ear, I took a look out of the window carefully, only to pull back inside immediately when a giant shadow swooped past my head. I swore - what the hell was that? It felt like a giant bird, or some kind of a monstrous bat was flying around outside. I closed my window glass and went to bed, turning the lamp light off, and getting myself ready for some much-needed sleep, though I didn't need to because I was already exhausted.
Somewhere during that time, amidst the tossing and turning over the creaking bed, I heard sounds across the empty hallway. They were muffled by my paper-thin door and it seemed to be coming from the room opposite mine – Peter's room. So, he was finally back, I thought, albeit much too late to keep up with his Aunt's appointment, but back nonetheless. And by the sound of things, he was making a fine mess in there. I could hear the loud crackle of plastic bags being opened, and the racket of objects falling to the ground. For a second, the thought crossed my mind that maybe it wasn't Peter in there but some kind of careless burglar. I mean, it certainly sounded like one and I still hadn't forgotten the ominous shadow I'd seen out in the fire escape a second ago. With a lot of building trepidation, I got out of bed and tiptoed my way to the door, slowly expecting the worst as I got closer and closer, only for the worries to simply dissipate the moment I took a peek outside. From where I stood, hidden behind the crack of my door, I spotted the tall, dark figure of Peter hurrying around in his room under his brown overcoat, his door wide open with the light from inside spilling onto the hallway floor. I noticed he wasn't wearing his glasses as he stomped around with a black garbage bag in hand, collecting the refuse lying around on the floor. So, that's what all the sound was about – a late-night garbage haul.
He stepped outside with the bag, closing the door to his room, and flew past me in the landing, while I stood staring at him from my hiding place in the pitch-black dark. He didn't notice me at all as he disappeared downstairs. I stood there for a second; May's voice from earlier going through my head like it was caught in an ethereal playback loop - "You know something MJ, I think he secretly quite likes you. Won't ever admit it though" The words echoed in the internal stereo between my ears, and that same anger I'd felt whilst conversing with May, started coursing through my veins again. There wasn't enough time to grab another breath or to compose my thoughts even just a little because next thing I knew, I was racing down the hallway following Peter's footsteps dressed in nothing but my pajama top and polka-dot shorts, and I guess, badly ruffled sleep hair – a terrifying combination.
He was in the alley adjoining the building, dumping the black bin bag into the dumpster, when I stumbled on to him, expecting to startle him. But it was me that got startled when he emerged from the shadows of the buildings and into the orange streetlight over the empty pavement. I bumped into him whilst turning the corner, immediately getting a good look at his face and the long deep gash running down the side of his left cheek. It looked purple and raw, and all sorts of nasty, and it gave him the look of a hillbilly gangster or someone who was running with a triad ring. Even his shoulders looked oddly lopsided and he kept shuffling them from side to side, almost like he was holding some kind of injury there.
We both hastily apologized to each other before mumbling a half-hearted hello and "How's it going?"
Once again, the anger I'd been feeling a moment ago had suddenly disappeared. Though this time, it was mostly down to his patchy, rough appearance, which had just caught me by surprise now that we stood in such close proximity. Everything about him, from the sunken skin around his tired eyes to the gaunt look of his veins popping through his ultra-pale skin, seemed to scream desperation and tiredness and a bone-deep sickness. He had the look of someone being run through the mill and sucked dry on the other side of a factory conveyor belt.
Unable to remember why I'd just stormed downstairs, I sighed before letting him know that his Aunt had come by to visit him earlier in the evening. He gasped and struck his face with his hand, and then winced when he realized he'd just aggravated the gash on his cheek. I thought about asking him what he'd been up to this whole time, but somehow seeing the look of anguish now plastered across his eyes, made me steer away from the topic. But again, the distant voice of May echoed through my eardrums – "He's probably out there saving the world" Well, that may be the case, in reality, I didn't know, but going by what I was seeing it felt like it was Peter that needed the saving and not the other way around. Another phrase from May Parker drifted down the winds of that late Manhattan midnight - "He hasn't been the same since her death, you know. I think Gwen's death really affected him, in a really bad way" Well, like most of her observations she'd probably been bang on the money with that last bit. The anger I was feeling earlier finally came back, but this time it felt warmer like someone had taken the sting out of the scalding rage and mellowed it out for better use.
"Listen, Peter," I said. "I don't know what's going on with you. Obviously, I don't. But honestly, you look like hell. Just make sure you don't end up there one of these days. At least for your aunt's sake"
Saying my piece, I turned and left, feeling a little better but knowing ultimately that I probably hadn't made much of an impact in the long run.