TITLE: Through the Door (9/10)
AUTHOR: C. Midori
EMAIL: socksless@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: JC/AL Angst
RATING: R for adult situations and language
SPOILERS: All of Season 8, except "Lockdown."
ARCHIVE: Please ask first for permission.
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations owned by Not Me. These Other People may include, but are not limited to: NBC, Warner Bros., Michael Crichton, etc. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: First, an announcement: Chapter Eight may be the last chapter and the second-to-last part overall of Through the Door, but plans for a sequel are in the works. Look for the yet-untitled sequel to hit a web browser near you this October. Getting back to our regularly scheduled programming, thanks to everyone who reviewed by email or on ff.net: Ghclayfan, Charlotte, Kate, Em, JD, Dana, Jess, Rebecca, CorruptCarbyChickie, Holly, Eve, ArtificialRed, hottie9752, and Theresa. You guys constantly encourage me with your kind words and amazing insights into the story. Super-sized thanks to Heather for her hospitality in hosting. And, of course, I'm a feedback junkie, so please review!
SUMMARY: Carter and Abby hit the road in hopes of finding answers and a little closure.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Pilgrim
But one man loved the
pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
* * *
Two weeks later.
IT WAS ALMOST LIKE DRIVING THROUGH OKLAHOMA AGAIN, except this time they were in Minnesota, the somber green countryside flying by the windows of his Jeep in flashes, like sudden and unexpected bursts of memory.
Carter sat with his eyes focused on the road, his hands expertly guiding the car along the gentle bends and a melody low in his throat. He glanced sideways. Abby sat in the passenger's seat beside him, slumped against the window with one hand entangled in her hair and the other lazily resting between the folds of a crinkled road map. The sunlight that slanted through the window caught along the slope of her profile and dusted the curves of her face in a pale, antiquated gold.
"I think we're officially lost," she said finally, a pen caught between her teeth.
"Yeah?"
"I know you're a man, and there's some unofficial man code dictating that you can't admit it when you're lost, but we're lost, Carter."
"See, that's where you're wrong," he countered, flipping down the visor to shield his eyes from the setting sun.
"So we aren't lost?"
"Oh." Carter blinked. "No, we're definitely lost. I was just going to say that the man code is official."
Groaning, Abby rolled her eyes.
"Hey," he said mildly, "I offered to get us plane tickets."
"I like driving," was her response.
"You're not driving," he reminded her.
"Fine." She yawned. "I like navigating."
"You're not navigating, either."
"I am too navigating."
"But we're lost."
"Hey, I never said I navigated well."
Carter smiled to himself. "Now you tell me."
Shoving the map messily into the glove department, Abby picked up the large plastic bag at her feet and set it on her lap, her hands picking through the collection of candy wrappers. Within a minute, she put the bag back down in a huff.
"I'm hungry."
"Do you see what I see?" Carter teased.
"Hey," she snapped her fingers, "Eyes on the road, buddy."
"You didn't answer my question."
Sighing, "I see about fifteen candy wrappers and an unopened bag of Milk Duds. You?"
"I see dinner."
"I stand corrected."
"Come on…didn't you say something about wanting to get there by tonight?"
"So?"
"So…we won't be able to make it if we stop for dinner."
"Carter," Abby said, plaintive, "Milk Duds do not a satisfying dinner make."
"I think there's a Snickers bar somewhere in there," he said helpfully.
"Come on, you've got to be kidding me."
"It's jumbo sized."
"Carter," she warned.
"Or we could get something to eat," Carter relented.
"How far is the next rest stop?"
"There's one in thirty miles and another in fifty. There's a motel at the thirty. But if we make the fifty, we're guaranteed a selection of fine Minnesotan bed and breakfasts—"
"I need to use the bathroom."
"Thirty miles it is."
They drove in silence the rest of the way, the sun before them alternatively dipping and soaring out of and into sight as the Jeep bobbed along the slopes of the sparsely populated road. From time to time Carter glanced over at Abby; her mouth wrung in a child-like petulance and the flush of sunset on her face, he thought she'd never looked prettier.
* * *
They had maintained their respective distances for nearly a week by the time Abby brought up Minnesota. Carter had passed these days watching her when he thought she wasn't looking—otherwise, the hours dragged by in long, reluctant stretches of time. Uneasily, he was reminded all too well of the only other period in their friendship when things had felt so horribly wrong: the weeks following their talk by the river, just after she and Luka had stopped seeing each other and as he had begun to date Susan.
Speaking of Susan, she had approached him on several occasions in the last couple of weeks, sometimes with a cup of coffee in hand and once with a hideously garish happy face sticker. He was, as she explained, emanating silent "cries for help" with his "hang dog face" and "puppy dog eyes," to which she of course had to respond.
Carter promptly responded back by glaring.
But as the days crawled by, her pointed inquiries came further and fewer in between. For she had come to realize that it wasn't so much the fact that he didn't want to answer her questions, but that he couldn't answer them. So he deflected them.
When Carter wasn't dodging Susan, he was watching Luka with a renewed kind of morbid curiosity. There was a sadness now to the way Luka smiled at Abby that Carter had never noticed before. It was as if the other man had suddenly and painfully realized how far and how deep the gulf between he and Abby had always ran. In spite of their similarities—dark, closed-off, tortured—they remained on opposite shores, no more able to help each other than their own selves. Like mirror images, they had spent the interval of their relationship attempting to send each other signals across the gulf, all the while being blinded by the glare from the other. As a result, neither could see past their own personal misery; reflected in, and augmented by, the other.
Strangely, Carter found himself sympathizing with Luka as the other man tried to grapple with this newfound knowledge. Sympathy was not an emotion he was used to experiencing when it came to his colleague—and in many ways, his rival—so it threw him.
Anyway, neither man had won this time. Abby spent her shifts ignoring the both of them (save for the necessary professional exchanges) and Carter, in his wisdom, kept his distance—and his vigil.
On more than one occasion he caught her making a beeline for the ambulance bay. It was during these times that he would slip into the lounge just to peer between the blinds of the window and watch her there. Standing under the leaf-fractured sunlight with her dark head bowed and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, she would spend her time pacing the perimeter of the bay and fingering, but never lighting, the smoke at her lips. Meanwhile, she seemed oblivious to the glimmer of sunshine falling upon her hair, crowning her dark head in a ring of endless light not completely unlike the tarnished halo of a fallen angel.
In this manner did he watch her every day, and she in return ignored him. So admittedly, he was more than a little surprised by her sudden invite to Minnesota.
But Abby was probably more surprised when he accepted.
Carter knew that she had expected his polite refusal when she asked. He also knew that she had not asked on an impulse, nor had she planned this moment ahead of time, either. Rather, the invitation came to her as naturally as the good humor that flickered in her gaze or the dark shifts in mood that crossed her face like shadows. Because it was unlike her to pretend to be anyone other than she was, she let it fall from her lips, no matter how awkward the situation between them. So he, in response, said what came most naturally to him, situation be damned: he said yes.
As the day for leaving drew nearer, their professional exchanges—bland, polite, and labored—were soon complemented by the casual five minute chats necessary for ironing out the details of the trip. On the morning of their departure, he had showed up at her door at the designated time, one hand clutching the wheel of his Jeep and the other hand clutching a bag full of candy. "Necessary rations," he had explained, popping a jawbreaker into his mouth.
That seemed to do the trick. Abby felt her face break into a smile and Carter joined her, inviting her with the ease of their old, easy amity to hop in the Jeep and keep all hands and objects inside the moving vehicle at all times. After that moment, there had been little to suggest that anything remarkable happened on that unexpected night, as well as on that unexpected morning.
But something had happened—two things, to be precise—and it was only a matter of time before they would resurface again.
With a vicious turn of the faucet, Carter stopped the flow of running water. Dazedly, he stared at himself in the mirror, lost in thought, until the sound of a toilet flushing yanked him out of his trance. He shook his head and the water off his hands.
* * *
The diner was a small, cozy affair straddling the highway, its confetti-bright sign and incandescent windows of light a welcomed interruption from the monotony of the empty, unreeling road. But now Abby wished they had opted for something a little quieter than the clamor of noisy dinnertime chatter and the bustle of ceaseless activity. The bright lights and sounds only exacerbated the headache that had flowered behind her eyes at lunchtime and still showed no signs of wilting.
As soon as they had entered the establishment, Abby had excused herself to use the restroom, coming back to find Carter chatting amicably with the waitress, a twenty-something blonde with a becoming smile and (apparently) personality to match. She had sat them in a booth by the window and promised to return soon, giving Carter a wink and Abby, nary a glance. Carter had excused himself shortly thereafter, presumably to use the restroom.
At first, Abby had leafed through the menu with gusto, intent on pacifying her grumbling stomach. But before long her eyes had wandered back outside to watch the procession of day to night. Her chin perched upon the heel of her hand and her eyes squinting in the glare, she watched and waited for the dusky rose-and-peach bloom of sunset to melt into the dream-water blue of twilight.
She had not slept much in the past week, her sleep plagued by dreams and nightmares alike. Wraith-like faces appearing in the faded colors of yesteryear, they created a hideous mural of images, their raspy voices slurring together in an elegy of promises long dismissed and buried by her consciousness. But in the daylight, these faces and these voices had no distinct form or meaning; like an Impressionist painting, they merely lost their distinctions when she tried to look closer at their vaguely terrifying figures.
What was perhaps most troubling about these visions was the place upon which she looked. It didn't take long for her to realize that the landscape in her dream was not some nebulous, indefinable thing, but a graveyard.
It was always with this sickening realization that she found herself jerking awake. On more than one occasion she awoke with a raw and aching cavity right over her heart. In these darkest hours she sat huddled on the bed, the phone cradled in her hands as she attempted to shake off the feeling of belonging to this graveyard.
It was a little better at work, but not by much. Abby needed only one look to know that their words, ugly and black and hateful, were still ringing in Carter's head as they were in hers, long after they had been uttered. She saw it plainly on his face, dark and fleeting like a shadow, and knew that the same expression was mirrored on her own.
She could not bear it, so she ignored him.
Sometimes, the waking and the dream became all too much for her glass-fragile self to take. It was during these times that she found herself retreating again and again to the ambulance bay, if only to remind herself that she was not yet a part of the graveyard of her sleep. The sun on her head and the tired August wind on her cheek, she reminded herself again and again that things were okay—that she was okay.
Nothing has changed. Abby consoled herself, taking deep breaths and the cigarette from her mouth. You're stronger than this.
But everything had changed. She felt it keenly, like a queer stab to her heart. There was a finality to it all—to their kiss, to their fight, to everything—that cut her cleanly to the bleached whites of her bones. The things she had said and done, and the things Carter had said and done in return, were not things one just took back. Rather, they were choices that remained with her like an unwelcome shadow; except unlike her faithful doppelganger, these choices appeared to have lives of their own, opening and shutting the doors in her life like a second heartbeat independent from her own.
It was the same way when Maggie died: this sense of being followed, of being locked out of certain rooms and led into others. When Abby had clutched the phone to her ear, scarcely believing the words coming from the other end of the line, she knew with an abrupt and dreaded certainty that the choices Maggie had made—and the choices Abby was about to—would be the kinds of choices that would shadow Abby daily. Try as she might, she no longer felt as if she controlled her life; rather, she felt as if her life controlled her. From the first conscious draw of breath in the morning to her last conscious exhale at night, she felt as if she was constantly, helplessly trapped, doomed to obey the lingering shadows of her past decisions even as she made new ones.
But she was resigned to it. This was, ironically, the choice she had made. She chose to make the kinds of non-choices that left the doors of her life ajar, until these very same non-choices grew tired of her passivity and started opening and closing, locking and unlocking the doors on their own.
Abby had the eerie feeling that Carter knew this. Somehow, he saw right through her half-hearted attempts to playact the living of her life. He saw her for who she was. Sometimes it frightened her and sometimes it angered her, but mostly it shamed her.
They would have to talk about this someday. Perhaps not today, nor tomorrow, but someday soon; she could feel it in the marrow of her bones. She knew they had to talk about what had transpired—not only on that night and on that morning, but for the past two years. They would have to talk about what had happened, and what had happened to her, and what had happened to them.
Carter would force her to look at herself in a way she was no longer accustomed to doing so. Doors would open and close—but by her own hand. Some she would walk through and some she would leave forever; regardless, he would follow her. And, with a notable exception, they would pass through most all the doors and emerge on the other side the same as they were before: friends. The best of friends. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Some small part of that disappointed her.
Not that there was anything wrong with being friends: it was, after all, how they began, and it was, she hoped, how they would always stay. But a small, secret part of her—a part that used to dream of sugared blossoms, and pretty dresses, and butterflies careening in the pit of her stomach—was strangely sorry to know that the tumult of the past month would soon pass. Washed over by the frank and painless camaraderie she knew to be their friendship, it would be as the tide washed over the shore, smoothing over imperfections in the wet sand with a kind of predictable, timeless grace. It would be welcomed, and it would be pleasant, but it would be easy, too easy.
After all that had happened, after the buildup and the breakdown, Abby could not accept that soon, things were going to be exactly the same as they were before. After Brian and her mother's passing and her drinking and her near rape, they would still be friends, as they were before it had all happened, as they were as it happened, and as they would be after it happened.
She didn't know whether to be thankful or resentful for it.
* * *
"Penny for your thoughts."
Startled, Abby snapped out of her reverie, watching as Carter slid into the seat across from her.
"A penny?" She raised a well-trained eyebrow at him. "Is that all?"
"That's all."
"Cheap bastard," she quipped.
"I've been called many kinds of bastards, but never a cheap one," he responded good-naturedly.
"Well, there's a first time for everything."
Over his menu, Carter gave her a pleasant smile.
Amused, Abby watched as their waitress took obvious note of Carter's return, a predatory gleam in her eye as she sashayed her way over to their table. She never once threw a glance in Abby's direction, all eyes on Carter as she took both their orders with a pretty smile before being whisked away by another table.
"I think she likes you," Abby observed.
"Yeah, I run into that problem a lot."
"Cocky bastard."
"Now that one, I've definitely been called."
Abby couldn't help herself; she laughed.
Carter's eyes lit up at the sound of her laughter reverberating in his ears. Without thinking, he spoke, the words falling from his lips like leaves snagged by the wind, sudden and careless. "I feel like I haven't heard you laugh in a long time."
Immediately, the laughter died, and she retreated far into herself like a wounded animal.
"Haven't had much to laugh about," she said, her voice light.
He chastised himself silently for his thoughtless words. Unthinkingly, blurted an apology: "I'm sorry."
Abby gave him a hard shrug. "There's nothing for you to be sorry about."
The waitress swung by again to deliver a fresh pot of coffee. She poured the black liquid into the two mugs, her eyes boring holes into Carter.
"Can I get you anything else?" she chirped.
"Uh…" He cleared his throat. "No thanks."
They watched as she flounced away.
Carter gave a nod in her direction. "Friendly, isn't she?"
"I didn't know one could flounce and carry coffee at the same time."
"Apparently, it's a prerequisite to the job."
"Ah." Abby sipped at her coffee, a ghost of a smile on her face. "Well, shift work becomes her."
"Don't be a snob. Not everyone can be a nurse."
"I wasn't being a snob, Dr. Carter."
He made a face at her. She watched as he poured a liberal amount of cream into his mug, followed by an innumerous number of sugar packets.
"Would you like some coffee with that sugar?" she teased.
"Jesus, no." Carter wrinkled his nose in distaste. "I don't know how you can drink this stuff black."
"It's easy. You just put it in your mouth and you swallow."
"My virgin ears," he replied solemnly.
"That's disgusting."
"I know."
"What are you, twelve?"
"Sometimes it feels like it."
They sat in companionable silence, their previous unease forgotten as they sat with hot mugs in their hands. Without looking, Abby could feel the light outside waning, the color of the sky deepening from a pale sapphire to a dark, rich cobalt. Far above the horizon, stars were probably beginning to emerge, sparkling like long diamonds embedded in the near-black felt of the sky.
She heard her spoon drop.
Letting out a breath, she became aware again of the clattering of utensils against plates and of the mumble of voices in the background. Uncomfortably, she closed her eyes against the din.
"Abby?"
She opened her eyes.
"Are you feeling okay?"
"Just tired," she said under her breath.
The waitress came once again, her tray laden with their dinners.
* * *
"Is that all you're eating?"
"Yeah."
Picking up her fork and knife, Abby marveled. "My god. It's no wonder you're so thin."
"What?" Carter challenged, between mouthfuls of salad.
"You eat like a rabbit."
"At least I don't eat road kill," he jabbed at her plate with his fork.
"Liver and onions, Carter," Abby rolled her eyes. "Liver. And. Onions."
"I heard 'road kill' somewhere in there."
"Rabbit," she shot back.
Feigning offence, Carter opened his mouth to retort but suddenly halted, spearing a piece of spinach and peering closely at the green.
A small moth rested on the leaf.
Smugly, "Rabbit."
"Rabbits don't eat moths," he commented, looking mournful.
The moth began to beat its wings feebly. Carter yelped, dropping his fork onto the table.
Abby chortled. "You know, you're funny when you're panicking."
"I wasn't," he stabbed at the leaf with his knife until it fell off the table, "Panicking."
"You were doing a ten on the panic scale."
Gloomy, he picked dispiritedly at the rest of his salad.
She smiled at him. "Why don't you order something else?"
"I will."
"You should try some liver."
"You offering?"
Abby speared a small piece with her fork and, impulsively, leaned forward, nudging the piece of meat at his mouth as he automatically complied.
"Hmmm." Thoughtfully, Carter chewed and swallowed.
"You're welcome," she said.
"Pretty good," he admitted. "You were right."
Loftily, "I usually am."
"Smug."
"Rabbit."
"Sanctimonious."
"Rabbit."
"Can I have some more?"
"Sure." A beat. "Rabbit."
As he was chewing, he called over for the waitress.
* * *
One look at the full parking lot and look of indifference on the face of the teenager before them told Abby that they weren't going to have any luck finding a room tonight. But Carter had insisted otherwise, and so Abby found herself listening only half-heartedly to his attempts to haggle with the teen. Who, she observed, seemed singularly uninterested in what Carter had to say, and more interested in tugging his headphones back over his ears.
"Look, man. I can't help you, okay?"
"But we just need a room for tonight."
"I told you," the teen replied, looking bored, "All our rooms are taken."
"How can you not have any rooms available?" Carter laughed. "We're in the middle of nowhere."
"Well, maybe a lot of people like Nowhere, Minnesota," he bristled, wearing a scowl Abby thought was entirely too big for his age.
"Apparently," Carter muttered under his breath. "All right, then. We'll just take our business somewhere else."
"There's nowhere else."
"The hell there isn't. There's a chain of bed and breakfasts at the next rest stop."
The teen laughed. "They're not built yet."
Carter looked incredulous. "But they're on the map."
"They're not built yet." Shrugging, he shoved his headphones over his ears. "What can I tell you, man? Bad map."
"I knew it wasn't my navigating," Abby whispered with a twinkle in her eye.
Carter looked at her wearily before returning to the teen. "So you're the only motel around?"
"Yeah."
"Within a hundred mile radius?"
"Yeah."
"You're the only one?"
Looking annoyed, the teen yanked his headphones back around his neck. "Look, what part of 'yeah' do you not understand?"
Abby stifled a laugh.
"You can't spare one room for one night?" Carter fairly shrieked.
"I'm sorry," he replied loudly, putting his headphones back on. "I can't hear you."
"Look." Carter leaned over and plucked them off. He squinted at the boy's nametag. "Mike."
"Hey, that's Mr. Marshall to you."
"All right, then." He closed his eyes briefly. Patiently, he began again. "Mike, can I talk to a real clerk?"
"Mr. Marshall" looked at him haughtily. "I am a real clerk."
"Give me a break. You can't be more than sixteen."
"I'm eighteen, thanks." He snatched the headphones away from Carter.
Carter opened his mouth and shut it again.
If looks could kill, Abby thought with a smile. Smothering the intense desire to laugh, she nudged Carter aside and leaned across the desk, taking the headphones back.
"Hi Mike. Can I call you Mike?" Before he could say anything, she continued. "I bet your dad wouldn't be too thrilled to find out that his son was scaring away business," she said pointedly, nodding over at the portrait of a smiling, burly Mike Marshall, Sr., hanging askew from a rusted nail driven into the wall.
"Mike's fine," the boy mumbled.
"Look, Mike, I know you have a vacant room because you have three sets of keys with room numbers on them hanging behind you. Now, you can either give us one of those three rooms—"
"But—"
"Or you can start praying now that your dad won't kick your ass from here to Chicago when he finds out you've been scaring away business."
Carter looked impressed. "Yeah," he added, for emphasis.
Abby rolled her eyes.
Mike shot Carter a murderous look before digging behind the desk, presumably for registration papers. "I was just bored. I was going to give you the room anyway."
"Well, now you have to."
"Carter," Abby sighed.
"Sorry."
Mike unearthed a weathered clipboard and a pen. "We only have one room. The other two are reserved."
"That's fine," she waved her hand dismissively. "We'll take it."
Carter filled out the necessary information and slid the clipboard back to Mike, who handed him a key.
"Thanks, Mike." Abby slid the headphone set across the check-in desk. "Have a good night."
"Thanks," Carter echoed, a smug smile on his face.
Pushing a shock of dirty blond hair out of his face, he jammed the headphones back in his ears. "Bastard," he muttered, without looking up.
* * *
"Did you hear him?" Abby thought Carter sounded vaguely insulted as they ascended the dark stairwell.
"Yeah."
"He called me a bastard!"
"Well-spotted."
"A bastard!" Carter repeated, for effect.
"I thought you said you were used to it," Abby responded mildly. She opened the door to the third floor hallway.
"Yeah, but not from kids," he argued.
"Look, what do you want me to do?"
"Kick his ass?" he suggested.
"Carter!" she laughed.
"Okay, okay. Tell me I'm not a bastard."
"Fine," she rolled her eyes between giggles. "You're not a bastard. Feel better?"
"Absolutely," Carter replied. "Thanks."
"I think this is our room," she said in response. She slid in the key and, with some difficulty, shoved the door open.
Staggering, they nearly fainted when they crossed the threshold. Stale mothballs mingling with the scent of some kind of furniture cleaner, the stench in the room was almost overpowering. Immediately, two pairs of hands rose to cover two noses and two mouths.
The room, however, did not look as bad as it smelled. Though on the small side, it featured a large, full-sized bed facing an ancient-looking television set at its foot and a battered table on its right side. The bathroom, which hooked to the side of the room near the entry, could fit two people comfortably at the same time. Large rectangular panes of glass looked out into the street, permitting light to pour in between the slits of the blinded windows. This light fell in sheets, striping the cheap brown shag carpet in bars cast from iron colored shadows.
"Looks like a jail," Abby finally said, cautiously removing her hands. She wrinkled her nose. "Did you bring your harmonica or should I bust out mine?"
"It's just for one night," Carter grimaced, his eyes taking a quick sweep of the room. "Wait—where's the mini bar?"
Abby looked at him.
"Kidding," he assured her, closing the door behind him.
"Snob," she teased. Gingerly, she perched herself on the edge of the bed as he walked into the bathroom. "We should get our bags."
Carter poked his head out from the bathroom. "What?"
"We should get our bags from the car," she repeated.
"I'll get them later." He flicked the light switch several times before walking back into the bedroom. "There's only one bed."
It was Abby's turn to say, "What?"
"There's only one bed," he repeated, unnecessarily.
"It's a double."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying we can share," Abby laughed. "What are you saying?"
"Oh." Carter felt himself redden. "Nothing. Okay."
She nodded, letting him off the hook, and shifted her attention on testing the springs of the bed. Her hands planted firmly on either side, she bounced up and down like a buoy bobbing merrily along in the ocean. The squeaking of the mattress was the only sound that could be heard in the room until Carter cleared his throat.
Abby stopped. "What?"
"When are we going to talk?" he said bluntly.
She looked up at him with dark, solemn eyes.
"Not until we get there, okay?"
"Okay." Biting his lip, he turned around and reached for the handle to the front door. "I'll go get our bags from the car."
Behind him, he heard her shift on the bed.
"Let me help you."
"No, it's okay," Carter waved at her to sit back down. "I got it."
He opened the door and backed into the hallway, his eyes never leaving hers. She sat on the bed, still as midnight, and looked back at him with the oddest expression on her face—half pleasure, half pain, and the rest, completely and utterly indecipherable. A wisp of her dark hair fell in front of her eyes and her gaze became swiftly lost to him in the complete absence of light.
Carter was startled; in the murky gloominess of the room, she was almost indistinguishable from the shadows that flowed around her like spilt black ink.
* * *
Abby was snoring again.
With a careful slowness, Carter turned his head away from the window and scooted closer to her body so he could watch her sleep. She slept with the heaviness of the dead, as if she had not slept for a very long time, her fingers knotted in the sheets and her eyelids fluttering gently as she snored.
Gently, so not to wake her, he brushed away the strands of hair that fell across her face like the dark, wilted stems of flowers. His touch lingered; his hand brushed against the soft down of her cheek in a tender caress, not completely unlike the manner in which her hand had caressed his face so many nights ago, on the lawn in front of his house.
That night felt like a lifetime ago; so much had happened since then.
But he still remembered the night like it was yesterday; her hand on his face, soft and dreamy like the wisp of a dress, and her eyes clapped possessively on him, and only him. He looked up at the ceiling and, for a moment, saw the sky as it was that night—blacker than black, like the gloss of a crow's wing, and spangled with stars that glittered like frozen flowers.
Carter knew it would be hard to move on. But he didn't know it was going to be this hard.
She had kissed him, yes. That was unmistakable. But the timing had been wrong and the meaning unclear, and since then there had been nothing to indicate that she felt for him what he felt for her with every loaded gaze, and every brush of skin. On the contrary, her behavior of the past two weeks had seemed to indicate the opposite—as if she believed that their kiss was some terrible mistake that was better left off ignored.
So he was doing what he had tried to convince himself to do over a year ago: he was letting go.
It was hard. He had been in this place for the last two years of his life. He had spent these two years wanting someone who was not his; who was pretty and strong and funny and vulnerable and always alone, even when she was dating Luka. He had built an entire world around her, his fantasies placing each beam of his little house of dreams in its proper place, right down to the white picket fence. And he had waited. Oh, how he had waited—faithfully and patiently, reverently and stubbornly.
Hopefully.
But this world had remained unclaimed, even when Luka became a thing of the past. So little by little, with great reluctance, Carter began to leave it. He began to let it alone, letting go of the leaves that fell like colored paper past the windows in the fall, and the rain that pattered with tiny mouse footsteps on the roof of the house in the spring. He let go of the frost that sugared the eaves and obscured the pretty Christmas lights in the winter; and the long, lazy afternoons in the hammock, the whir of dragonflies in their ears, in the summertime.
The house lay dark and boarded up, the door left only slightly ajar. With a lingering last look, Carter closed his eyes and turned away, his back to her slumbering form.
Abby was careful to keep her breathing deep and even. When she was sure he had fallen asleep, she opened her eyes, staring numbly into the darkness.
* * *
"Stop the car."
Carter pulled up in front of a weathered looking two-story house. In dire need of a new paint job, the blue trim of the roof was peeling and what used to be a white coat of paint was now dirty and faded. An abandoned bicycle lay on its side on the front lawn, its wheel still spinning in the slight breeze, and behind it he could see a small colony of pinwheels driven into the ground among their neighbors of brightly colored tulips.
He looked at her questioningly.
"This is my home," Abby explained, folding the map in her hands and not looking at him. "I mean, it used to be my home."
"When?"
Thoughtfully, "A long time ago."
Abby pushed the door open and hopped out, shutting it quietly behind her. Carter followed her suit.
"That's my window," she mused, more to herself than to him. "I used to sit by it and wait for Maggie to come home whenever she took off." She swung around, squinting into the harsh afternoon sunlight. "I watched the moon every night."
Obediently, he followed her shifting gaze.
"The tulips are still here," she said wistfully. "Maggie liked to grow tulips." Swallowing, she felt her throat close up in remembrance. She looked at the bright blood-reds and the butter-yellows, with their black bumblebee centers, and felt the backs of her eyes smart.
Carter cleared his throat.
A little girl, about eight or nine with enormous wood brown eyes and dirt-smeared cheeks, stood on the cracked cement pathway and stared.
"Hi," Abby smiled. "I'm Abby. What's your name?"
The girl remained mute.
Abby tried again. "Is your mommy home?"
The girl shook her head in affirmation, her pigtails wobbling. Her face broke into a shy smile. Then, without warning, she whirled around, running up the path and into the house, the screen door banging behind her.
Abby followed. With a secret certainty, Carter stayed behind and watched.
"Hello?" she called loudly.
A haggard-looking woman appeared at the door, her russet-colored hair pulled back into a messy bun. Carter watched as Abby exchanged words with this woman—presumably, the little girl's mother—and the woman disappeared briefly, only to reappear with a pair of gardening scissors.
He wrinkled his forehead in curiosity and watched as they cut a bouquet of tulips from the garden.
* * *
Carter gripped the wheel in unease. Abby had not said a word to him since they left her old house with a bouquet of tulips in tow, now nearly an hour ago. Wisely, he had not pried; instead, he had driven on in silence, knowing instinctively where she wanted to go, his eyes glancing down from time to time at the map that now sat on his lap instead of hers.
She sat with her clear eyes fixed on some vague, indefinable point beyond the horizon. The flowers lay across her legs, their bright heads in stark contrast to the slender white fingers that clutched at their stems. From time to time he glanced over discreetly, noticing the troubled, wistful look that never left her eyes and the measuring the distances she seemed to be mentally traveling without him. It was as if she was some place very far away, in some place he could not follow. It made him nervous.
The crumble of gravel beneath his wheels, Carter shifted his Jeep into park and turned the key in the ignition, killing the engine. He looked at her sideways.
"We're here," he announced, rather unnecessarily.
She said nothing.
Gently, he prodded. "You okay?"
Abby paused, as if to consider his question, and pressed her lips together.
"No." She turned her head toward him and added, "But I'm not supposed to be."
Slowly, Carter nodded his head, his fingers drumming against the wheel.
"Do you want me to go with you?" he said at last.
"I wouldn't have asked you to come if I didn't."
"Okay."
Sliding the key out of the ignition, Carter opened his door and stepped out, slamming it shut behind him. He trotted over to the other side and grabbed her door. Her eyes dark and her arms full of flowers, his eyes suddenly failed him, and he found he could not speak.
* * *
When Abby would later look back upon this memory, she always found it wryly macabre that the first thing she noticed about the cemetery was its beauty. Still privately owned by an individual and not a corporation, it was obviously very much cared for and consequently well tended. Like an ocean whose color deepened and faded depending on its death, the grass bristled a deep bottle green, darker in some places than in others. Dirt paths carved it into puzzle pieces. Surrounding the paths was a wrought iron gate whose bars were decorated by the roses that grew wild and tangled around its rails. Their heads drooping like girl's skirts and their blooms a delicate, frothy pink, their petals showered the ground in a cascade of color at the slightest hint of a breeze.
"Abby?" Carter's voice came like a beam through the darkness. He touched her arm gently. "Do you remember where it is?"
She nodded.
The walk was a short one—five, maybe ten minutes—and she led the both of them as she made her way methodically across the grounds, the tulips nestled in the crook of her arm. Finally, she halted, her face dappled by the shade from an old, sturdy-looking tree whose branches grew gnarled around the circle of its trunk. She stopped with her heart caught in her throat and her shadow cast in front of her, falling across the length of a fairly new grave, its headstone laid to rest as closely as possible to the base of the tree.
It was a fairly simple headstone. Gray and unadorned, its plain type betrayed the complexity of the emotions surrounding the burial of the woman beneath it. Around the slab, the grass had only recently begun to grow back, spiking in random tufts here and there. Dried mud caked parts of the stone. But she could still read the words etched upon the smooth plane of its surface.
Maggie Wyczenski
1948—2002
She felt the flowers fall from her arms.
* * *
What did one do when faced with the dead? Abby wondered dizzily. Did one talk to the dead as if they were our silent companions, hoping that these apparitions lived on like memories—gone, but never really completely vanished from our corporeal world; waiting, and ready to return at the slightest hint of recollection? Or were the dead more like shadows, watching us as we watched them, recalling with painful acuity what it was like to know pleasure and know pain, and all the more wretched because they could not once again know it?
Or were they neither, belonging not to the waking or the dreamed?
Can you hear me, Maggie? First mommy, then mom, then mother, until the day came when I could not bear to use that name any longer, for your disease had made it impossible to love you like a proper daughter should.
Was I yours? Was I yours to love, yours to poison? Did you remember me all those times you ran away, all those times you tried to kill yourself, and did you remember that all the pain you gave to yourself, you gave to your daughter a thousand times over?
Or did you not care?
When I was a child I thought like a child, I acted like a child, I loved as a child. But you never once told me that it was a disease that made you act the way you did; you let me think that I had done something wrong to deserve the kind of mother who brought me flowers one day and chased me around the house with a knife on another. When I was an adult, you begged me to understand that you had a disease which made you act the way you did; you begged me to see that you had done nothing wrong.
But by that time it was just an excuse, and nothing more.
Once upon a time you taught me that forgiveness was not earned but given freely, most of all to those who least deserved it. I learned otherwise. I learned that one could only forgive those who earned it, those who worked hardest for it, or I could not afford to give it otherwise. For you had taken all the forgiveness I had to give until I had none to spare—not for Richard, not for Luka, not for myself. I hated you for that; did you know that?
I suppose you did. You're the one who taught me how to hate.
You also taught me how to love.
But some lessons I remember better than others.
Where are you, now? Do you think about me as I often as I think about you? Do you remember me as the child I once was, innocent and forgiving, or do you remember me as the woman I became, hard and embittered? Do you love them both? I am not so sure I do.
There are so many versions of you I remember, most of which I forgot a long time ago in my stubbornness and in my pride. I remember the mother who drew pictures in my oatmeal and the mother who put drink umbrellas in my milk. I remember the mother who used to leave me in the dead of night and the mother who locked herself in a motel room in Oklahoma.
Now it is not Oklahoma I remember best, but Florida. I see you as I saw you that day: as a body. A body half-naked and lifeless; arms and legs draped across the curves of a cheap mattress and face pillowed in a pool of vomit littered with both pills and alcohol. I remember this body best because I remember the face—eyes half-open and waiting, as if in expectation, perhaps for someone to come and save her. Perhaps even me.
I can only remember you as a body. Because in that moment, I could not look at you and see my mother. It couldn't be. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe that it was you who lay dead in that room, you who had drowned herself in her own vomit, you who had taken her own life. Because you had already spent far too much of your life thinking only of yourself and not about the people who loved you.
I couldn't bear to believe that you had done it again.
Did you love me?
I think you did. But oh, how I wished you showed it more. I guess it doesn't matter anymore. I turned out okay, didn't I?
Did I? Sometimes I look in the mirror and I cannot believe that the woman looking back at me is me. It cannot be. She is too tired, too weary—her face too battle-scarred and her heart too hardened.
Can you hear me, Maggie? Because I hate you. I hate you and I love you. I hate you because you are weak and I love you because you force me to be strong. I hate you because of what you do, to your life and to mine, and I love you because of who you are. I hate you and I love you, and I love you and I hate you, but most of all I miss you.
And I'm sorry. For before I saw through a glass, darkly; and I knew not what I had done. Now I see what you saw when we stood face to face—what you knew that I had yet to fully realize.
It was not so much the things I had done which ravaged me so much as the things I had not.
I'm sorry. Oh god, I'm sorry.
* * *
"Maggie died because she was drinking."
They were sitting in front of the tree, their shoulders touching and their bodies casting shadows like bent flower stems upon the wood. The day was fast drawing to a close, clouds closing in like curtains with hems that swept along the flat of the horizon, leaving streaks of peach and coral and seashell in their wake. To the right the moon was rising like a large, lopsided pearl, brightening and taking shape as the sun made its exit. Somewhere in the distance a bird trilled, its cry lovely and haunting.
Abby laughed. "I can't believe I just said that."
Carter turned to her. "Is it true?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it is."
"Then I can believe it."
They were silent again, washed in the lovely sapphire dream of twilight, and above them the stars began to fade into view.
"I wasn't lying when I said she overdosed." Abby looked down at her hands, the transparent blue of glass, then looked back at Carter. "She did. But not enough to kill her; at least, not by itself."
"I see," he said slowly. His arms draped over his knees, he pursed his lips and tilted his head toward hers. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"I don't know." Abby shrugged, a half-smile on her face as she plucked a blade of grass from the ground. "I guess I didn't want to admit that I was wrong."
Intuitively, he understood what she was saying.
"I'm sorry," she said finally.
"You don't have to apologize—"
"Please."
Carter clamped his mouth shut.
Her fingers worked at the blade in her hand, fraying it sliver by sliver as she spoke.
"You didn't understand," she began. "You didn't understand what it was like knowing your mother killed herself in spite of you. At least your mother tried to talk to you—she left, but she came back. Mine left, and that was it. It was like…"
Her voice grew small.
"It was like I didn't matter to her anymore."
He sucked in a breath.
"I know she didn't do it to spite me," Abby laughed softly to herself, "But it still felt like it. I felt like she abandoned me." Her eyes darted to his. "You know?"
Biting his lip, he nodded, his head jerking up and down in small, swift movements.
"I decided that I wasn't going to let her do this to me. Not again. I decided, hell, if she could drink her way to an early grave, so could I. So I did it."
Closing his eyes, Carter leaned his head dully against the tree.
"I drank. A lot. More than you know."
Everything was beginning to make sense. It was all falling into place, like the scattered pieces of a puzzle snapping together.
"I drank because I didn't want to be that little girl again, waiting for her mom to come home. I drank because I wanted to get back at my mom, somehow, for leaving me. I drank because I didn't want to be a victim." Her mouth curved into a small, sad smile. "I guess that didn't work too well, did it?"
He remained mute, issuing another slight nod in response.
Abby squinted into the sunset, a wavering sliver of magma over the horizon, leaving strata of fire in its wake: scarlet, tangerine, gold.
"I meant what I said: about you making decisions for me. I don't like it. I don't want to be rescued; I don't need to be saved."
"I know."
"You do that again and I'll rip out your ribcage and wear it as a hat."
"Duly noted," Carter cracked a grin. "And I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone to Luka behind your back; I should've been honest."
She nodded thoughtfully.
"Hey, Carter?"
"Yeah?"
"I have a problem, don't I?"
Surprised, he turned toward her, his face chalked in the long blue shadows of early night. "I don't know," he replied, his voice slow and even. "Do you?"
She lifted her face to the sky, memories unreeling before her like a ribbon. There was nothing vague or unclear about these images, images she now recognized as the ones from her dreams. They were memories of her fainting, nearly once in the ambulance bay then again in the trauma room; and memories of a throbbing, an unceasing spell of headaches since the day Brian beat her. They were memories of her lying, to herself and to Carter; and memories of Nancy, her bright scarlet head bent as she leaned over to touch, ever so gently, the still body of her baby.
And then the last memory. A new memory; one whose validity she was not quite sure she could trust, even though her unconscious already did. A memory of herself, seated in a smoke-filled bar, being touched by a man she did not know, having a drink she could not taste in a moment she could not remember.
Abby closed her eyes, briefly, then opened them again. She turned toward Carter.
"I haven't had a drink in two weeks."
Carter smiled. He leaned over and kissed her gently, just above the place his thumb had swept along her crown that winter night in the ER so many lifetimes ago.
* * *
It was nearly midnight when they left Maggie to be in peace. Their backs to the tree, Abby fell asleep several times against Carter's shoulder, her hands caught warmly in his. He nudged her when she began snoring to wake her up and tease her. She, in turn, reached over and poked him in the ribs, reiterating her previously issued threat until he relented and called for a truce.
Finally, they got up, their bodies a tangle of limbs and the cold night air on their skin. But before they turned away to leave, Abby paused and dropped his hand to turn and give her mother one last look.
Her heart beating in one long, aching throb, she stood out like a pale flower in the black of midnight, the line of her profile clean and white against the darkness. Her dark eyes swept over the bouquet of tulips she had laid across her mother's grave so that the tips of their petals brushed just against the headstone, and over the faintly discernable writing inscribed upon the dark slab, committing the curves of the letters to memory. She looked up, the sky full of stars, and swallowed the lump in her throat.
She had almost turned to leave when something caught her eye. Behind the grave, near the base of the large tree, she saw something she had not noticed the first time she had laid her mother to rest, nor when she arrived today, her eyes smarting with tears.
It surprised her to see that wildflowers grew there.
* * *
CREDITS: The title of the chapter (as well as the obligatory quote) is taken from "When You Are Old" by W. B. Yeats. Carter's thoughts on Abby and Luka were inspired by an email from the radiantly irreverent JD, who was kind enough to share her musings on the Abby/Luka relationship. "Leaf-fractured" is borrowed from The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and "a ring of endless light" is the title of a book by Madeleine L'Engle. "Shift work becomes her" is an echo of Abby's line in "Beyond Repair." (Can you tell I liked the episode? ^_^) T.S. Eliot's passage about the hyacinth girl in his masterpiece "The Wasteland" inspired the line, "Her eyes dark and her arms full of flowers, his eyes suddenly failed him, and he found he could not speak." Part of Abby's musings at her mother's grave is inspired by the following biblical passage: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13:11) "I don't want to be rescued; I don't need to be saved" is a line lifted from the splendid breakup scene between Abby and Luka in "The Longer You Stay." "You do that again and I'll rip out your ribcage and wear it as a hat" is paraphrased from BtVS. A more detailed explanation of the references used in this chapter can be found at my fic journal (www.livejournal.com/~cmidori).