Title: Stabler
Author: Shae-Lynn - benson_stabler@hotmail.com
Fandom: SVU
Genre: General
Pairing: None
Date: September/October 2003
Feedback: Sure!
Archive: ff.net and my site - www.angelfire.com/tv2/svu
Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU, and its amazing characters do not belong to me. I'm not using them to make money, although if I could, I would.
Dedication: This story is dedicated to my best friend, Sacha, who has given me countless suggestions for my various stories and helped me out of writer's block, and also to Ann-Marie MacDonald because I can finish it.
Maureen -
f. Irish, English
Anglicized form of Mairin, Mary
-"wished-for child"
It was Maureen's parents' fault that she got stuck in the Linguistics class.
After all, it was her dad who had forgotten to send her application fee to Columbia, limiting her choice of college. But it was her mother who had, even after excessive reminders, forgotten her registration fee to Hudson, causing her to miss the first registration deadline. And her mother had nothing like her father's excuse for forgetfulness. So after all her required courses were sorted out, all that was left for electives was Linguistics or Latin.
"Yeah," she said sarcastically, "Real practical, mom. So many of my friends speak Latin."
So as she made her way down the corridor, scowling at the ascending room numbers, she was determined to make her mom feel guilty about this for the rest of the year. Her dad too. This thought didn't last long. She knew in her heart that her dad was doing his best to support them, that things wouldn't be any better if he lost his job, that he wanted to come home more than he was able to. Maureen remembered what it had been like when the twins were babies, before dad's promotion, when they'd had to scrimp and save every penny. She didn't want to go back to that. They weren't rich now by any means, but they managed.
She also knew that her dad didn't enjoy his job in many ways. How could he? She would always remember the night they stopped at a crime scene and she disobeyed him, got out of the car, and saw the man on the beach, his body a funeral pyre. Just thinking about it made her want to throw up. So she knew that he was protecting them with his silences around the dinner table, with his late night calls to Olivia. She tried hard, but she couldn't resent him. She was the oldest and could afford to be wiser than her brother and sisters. Wiser. That's why she was here at Hudson, right? She could handle a little thing like Linguistics.
Finding the room at last, she was surprised that it was so much smaller than her other lecture halls. It couldn't hold more than forty people, but it was almost full. She sat in an empty desk at the back next to a tall boy with red hair and green eyes.
"Hi," he said, flashing a smile that crinkled his freckled nose. She thought he was gorgeous. Things were starting to look up. "I'm Adam Waller."
"Maureen," she said. He opened his mouth to continue but they were interrupted by the professor rapping the chalk ledge for their attention.
"Good afternoon and welcome to Linguistics."
The prof was younger than most, with plastic-framed glasses, wearing a black sweater with a short black-and-yellow-striped skirt that clashed with her garish pink lipstick. She was nothing like any teacher Maureen had seen.
"I don't want to keep you here too long, so we'll just go over the syllabus and then you can go. I'm Professor Downing. My office hours and email are at the top of the first page, so if you need to get in touch with me, feel free to. Our first term, if you see on the syllabus, will be primarily focussed on the etymology of words."
Professor Downing took a piece of chalk and wrote "etymology" on the board, underlining it with a flourish.
"What's that?" asked a boy in the front row.
"Look it up; you're in college now, sweetie," she said. "Now," she continued, "to get you into the sense of the course, your first assignment will be due in two weeks." Maureen sighed. She heard Adam groan under his breath. "Don't worry. This should be an opportunity to gain marks. The description of the project is on the back page of your syllabus. I need you to hand in a family tree with at least four people on it that explains the etymology of the names. That's all. You can go."
Maureen looked and Adam and shrugged.
"Shouldn't be too hard," she said, "If only I knew what the hell etymology is."
Alex laughed, "It's the history of the word." Maureen blushed. "Listen, my dad's a Linguistics Professor at Columbia. He has huge etymology dictionaries. Maybe you could come over sometime and we could work on our projects together." Maureen smiled so wide her cheeks hurt and she was sure she could hear her heart beating in her ears.
"That would be awesome." They exchanged phone numbers and walked outside together.
"Where are you going next?" Alex asked Maureen under the shade of a huge oak tree in the courtyard.
"I have English," she said.
"Oh, well I'm going home."
"Oh."
"Well see you later, Maureen."
She made a mental note to go home and thank her parents.
**********
Elizabeth -
f. English
from Greek Elisabet, "God is my oath"
Richard -
m. English
derived from Germanic ric "power, rule" and hard "brave, hardy"
The year Elliot started working in Manhattan, Maureen begrudgingly agreed to walk with Dickie and Lizzie to their first day of school. Lizzie held her sister's hand, but Dickie straggled behind, chewing on his lower lip.
"Why can't daddy take us?" Lizzie asked, looking up to her big sister.
"Because of his new job," Maureen said, "He's going to be out in Manhattan."
"Why?" Lizzie asked. Maureen simplified it.
"So he can catch bad guys," she answered.
"Why?" Lizzie asked.
"Because."
"Why?"
"Stop it!" Lizzie started to laugh. Her strawberry-blonde hair was plaited so tightly it gave her face a stretched look. She wore "party shoes" with scuffed tips as she skipped along beside her sister. Dickie was still quiet. He looked too small for his new blue backpack. His hair was slicked over to one side and with the fuss his mother had gone to getting them ready that morning, he was just glad he didn't have to wear a tie.
Finally he spoke, "Maureen, is daddy a hero?" Maureen spotted a group of her friends walking across the street from the school and she flushed with embarrassment to be seen with her siblings. She dropped Lizzie's hand. Dickie tugged on the hem of her new sweater. "Is he?"
"Get lost, you guys," Maureen said, hustling the twins into the schoolyard. Dickie repeated his question once again, more urgently.
"Sure, Dickie, whatever." Then Maureen jogged out of the gate, waving to her friends, crunching through the fallen leaves.
**********
"Richard Stabler?" Miss Hanson, the young, blonde teacher peered over her class list at the little boy seated in the third row.
"Here," he said, raising his hand solemnly.
"Do you prefer to be called Richard? Rick? Dick?" A few of the older classmates snickered at the last suggestion. Dickie blushed, made a spontaneous decision, then lied.
"Richard," he said firmly, avoiding his sister's eyes. Miss Hanson nodded and marked something down on the class list. Dickie waited for it. She looked up at him again. Then she looked at Lizzie
"Are you two related?" she asked, pointing. Dickie rolled his eyes.
"We're twins," he said, mentally adding "stupid".
"Wow. Isn't that special? Splendid!" she exclaimed, then continued, "Amanda Thompson?"
"Here."
"Stephanie Williams?"
"Here." The voice was so pretentious sounding that Dickie turned to look at the speaker. Stephanie Williams was sitting beside his sister, wearing a blouse with a kilt and patent leather shoes. Her red hair was tied with a huge bow. Dickie disliked her immediately.
"John Zuckerman?"
"Here." Stephanie looked right at Dickie and he turned back to the front quickly.
After the roll call, Miss Hanson announced a welcome-back tea for parents interested in helping out with the class in the coming year.
"I want you to take these home to your parents," she announced. She handed out the fliers just before the bell rang for recess.
Out in the schoolyard, Dickie found Lizzie playing hopscotch with another girl he recognized with disgust as snobby Stephanie Williams.
"Lizzie?"
"What, Dickie? I'm busy," Lizzie said, stopping on the number 6, balancing precariously on one foot.
"Dickie?" Stephanie laughed at his name. He tried to ignore her.
"Do you think Dad will come to the parents' thing next week?"
Hop. Hop. Hop.
"Your turn, Stephanie," Lizzie said to the other girl, who tossed her stone and began the course. Lizzie stepped to the side with her brother. "Probably not," she told him, "he has his new job. He's really busy. Maybe mom can come."
Hop. Hop. Hop.
Stephanie finished her run and came towards the pair, a smug look on your face.
"Your dad chooses his job over you? He must not love you very much," she said with a smirk. Lizzie got very pale. Dickie stepped forward.
"What do you mean?" he challenged.
"I mean, any good parent would just take the day off. I know my dad would." Tears sprang up in Lizzie's eyes and she looked at her brother in desperation. Stephanie put her hands on her hips and waited for Dickie's response.
"You're so stupid! My dad's a hero," Dickie exclaimed with confidence, "My dad helps people and catches bad guys."
By the time Dickie and Lizzie entered school in grade 7, many things had changed.
"So what does your father do for a living?" asked the guidance counsellor during an introductory appointment. Dickie scowled.
"My dad's dead." It was a half-truth, and Lizzie didn't bother to correct him.
**********
Kathleen
Anglicized form of Caitlin
From Greek aikia "torture"
Kathleen had always thought of her entry into senior year of high school as being like a scene out of Grease. She and her friends had no Pink Ladies jackets, but when they walked through the double doors of the school in their new clothes, the confidence was there, along with the sense of finality. She imagined all the little grade tens looking up to her as someone to emulate, although maybe not as far as her skills in Math.
However, the romanticism of the moment was severely spoiled by the first bell summoning her to Chemistry.
She managed to get through the morning all right and found her friends sitting together in the cafeteria at lunch. Kathleen sat down with them and put a fork into the steaming plate of greyish gunk.
"What is this stuff?" she made a face.
"Who knows," her friend, Grace, replied.
The group was catching up on their summers and other general stuff when Grace brought up the party she was having that weekend.
"My parents are out of town and I have the whole house. Don is coming," she said. Don was Grace's college-aged boyfriend.
"I can't come," Kathleen said, disappointment clear, "we're going to my uncle's for dinner," she said with disgust. A funny look came over Grace's face. The rest of the group kept talking and eating, but Grace leaned over and looked her friend right in the eye.
"You're lucky, Kathleen," she said, "my uncle never even talks to us. He's estranged." Kathleen furrowed her brow.
"Why?" She sensed she had just got herself into a touchy subject, but Grace didn't seem very fazed.
"When my grandparents got divorced, my dad lived with my grandma and my uncle lived with my grandpa. They just never talked after that."
Kathleen confessed ignorance, "Is that common?"
"Oh sure," Grace assured, "it happens to most divorced families. Don hates his mother, for example."
"Oh."
For the rest of her classes, Kathleen stared at the wall, the floor, out the window, entertaining morbid thoughts about the possible breakdown of her own family. After all, sometimes it seemed inevitable, like the other night when she heard her mother pacing around upstairs as her father made a late-night call to Olivia from the kitchen about another disturbing case he didn't want to bring home, bring upstairs to his wife. Who would side with whom if it happened?
Obviously, Maureen would side with Dad. Maureen had been his first, his favourite, although she hadn't been planned. Kathleen had seen all the baby videos and it always looked like her father, with his take-charge attitude and deep sense of responsibility, had adapted to parenthood much better than her mother. Her parents never acknowledged that they'd conceived out of wedlock, but she'd done the math and she knew her older sister had, too. Maybe Maureen looked at the scene and saw her father sacrificing his freedom for his unborn child, owning up to his mistakes, realizing they weren't really mistakes after all. But it wasn't just that. There was something between Maureen and her dad that Kathleen couldn't quite put a finger on. They just clicked.
Dickie and Lizzie, on the other hand, were sticking close to their mother. How many birthdays had Dad missed while running around Manhattan, trying to save someone else's children? Kathleen knew that Dickie and Lizzie were their mother's children. They were indulged by her.
So far she had Maureen on her father's side and Dickie and Lizzie down on her mother's. So where did that leave her? In the middle, where she'd always been.
Kathleen went through phases. She loved both her parents at times, but she resented her father's cavalier attitude to discipline. He'd march in after a week's absence and express sudden concern over Kathleen's grades.
"How dare you?" she had shouted at him once in the kitchen, "You're never here and then you think you know what's best for me?" Her face was burning and she could see she'd stopped her dad right in his tracks. He could dish it out, but he sure couldn't take it, she thought.
"Kathleen," her mother admonished quietly from the kitchen counter. Kathleen just glared at her. Traitor. Take his side, why don't you.
"Maybe if you were ever here, you'd know that I'm trying to get help for my Math," she explained, nearly in tears, "I just need a break sometimes. Why can't you understand that?" She'd turned and pounded upstairs, slamming her door and flinging herself down on the bed, shaking with anger.
But she also resented her mother. Sometimes she thought that it had taken her mother two tries at loving her children before she got it right with her youngest. She felt guilty about having that thought since she knew it wasn't true. She had a hard time remembering the time Maureen used to talk about, the time before their dad had got his new job, the time when there wasn't enough money, so she didn't always see the necessity of his job. But she didn't want him on her back all the time, either. She was stuck in the middle, as always.
One one hand, Maureen had become the pillar of the family with her babysitting, cleaning, and cooking. On the other, Dickie and Lizzie had become the little angels. And somehow or other Kathleen had become the scapegoat. Who left this mess here? Must've been Kathleen. How come I didn't get this message? Kathleen took it. Kathleen always hogs the bathroom. Kathleen always stays out too late and talks on the phone too long. Kathleen, don't use that tone of voice. Kathleen this. Kathleen that.
**********
A week later, curled up in the big leather couch of the Wallers' den, Maureen researched her family tree. After painstakingly researching her siblings' given names, she put down the heavy book with a sigh. Adam looked up from his leather-bound volume.
"Bored?" he asked.
"Yeah." He grabbed her book and passed his to her.
"Here, you do my name and I'll do yours." He flipped through her book. "Stabler, Stabler, here we go." Adam raised the book, and recited the entry like a great orator:
"Stabler - stable, from Old French estable from Latin stabilis, 'firm, steadfast'. Literally, 'able to stand'."
Maureen raised her eyebrows.
"Well that's ironic."
Author: Shae-Lynn - benson_stabler@hotmail.com
Fandom: SVU
Genre: General
Pairing: None
Date: September/October 2003
Feedback: Sure!
Archive: ff.net and my site - www.angelfire.com/tv2/svu
Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU, and its amazing characters do not belong to me. I'm not using them to make money, although if I could, I would.
Dedication: This story is dedicated to my best friend, Sacha, who has given me countless suggestions for my various stories and helped me out of writer's block, and also to Ann-Marie MacDonald because I can finish it.
Maureen -
f. Irish, English
Anglicized form of Mairin, Mary
-"wished-for child"
It was Maureen's parents' fault that she got stuck in the Linguistics class.
After all, it was her dad who had forgotten to send her application fee to Columbia, limiting her choice of college. But it was her mother who had, even after excessive reminders, forgotten her registration fee to Hudson, causing her to miss the first registration deadline. And her mother had nothing like her father's excuse for forgetfulness. So after all her required courses were sorted out, all that was left for electives was Linguistics or Latin.
"Yeah," she said sarcastically, "Real practical, mom. So many of my friends speak Latin."
So as she made her way down the corridor, scowling at the ascending room numbers, she was determined to make her mom feel guilty about this for the rest of the year. Her dad too. This thought didn't last long. She knew in her heart that her dad was doing his best to support them, that things wouldn't be any better if he lost his job, that he wanted to come home more than he was able to. Maureen remembered what it had been like when the twins were babies, before dad's promotion, when they'd had to scrimp and save every penny. She didn't want to go back to that. They weren't rich now by any means, but they managed.
She also knew that her dad didn't enjoy his job in many ways. How could he? She would always remember the night they stopped at a crime scene and she disobeyed him, got out of the car, and saw the man on the beach, his body a funeral pyre. Just thinking about it made her want to throw up. So she knew that he was protecting them with his silences around the dinner table, with his late night calls to Olivia. She tried hard, but she couldn't resent him. She was the oldest and could afford to be wiser than her brother and sisters. Wiser. That's why she was here at Hudson, right? She could handle a little thing like Linguistics.
Finding the room at last, she was surprised that it was so much smaller than her other lecture halls. It couldn't hold more than forty people, but it was almost full. She sat in an empty desk at the back next to a tall boy with red hair and green eyes.
"Hi," he said, flashing a smile that crinkled his freckled nose. She thought he was gorgeous. Things were starting to look up. "I'm Adam Waller."
"Maureen," she said. He opened his mouth to continue but they were interrupted by the professor rapping the chalk ledge for their attention.
"Good afternoon and welcome to Linguistics."
The prof was younger than most, with plastic-framed glasses, wearing a black sweater with a short black-and-yellow-striped skirt that clashed with her garish pink lipstick. She was nothing like any teacher Maureen had seen.
"I don't want to keep you here too long, so we'll just go over the syllabus and then you can go. I'm Professor Downing. My office hours and email are at the top of the first page, so if you need to get in touch with me, feel free to. Our first term, if you see on the syllabus, will be primarily focussed on the etymology of words."
Professor Downing took a piece of chalk and wrote "etymology" on the board, underlining it with a flourish.
"What's that?" asked a boy in the front row.
"Look it up; you're in college now, sweetie," she said. "Now," she continued, "to get you into the sense of the course, your first assignment will be due in two weeks." Maureen sighed. She heard Adam groan under his breath. "Don't worry. This should be an opportunity to gain marks. The description of the project is on the back page of your syllabus. I need you to hand in a family tree with at least four people on it that explains the etymology of the names. That's all. You can go."
Maureen looked and Adam and shrugged.
"Shouldn't be too hard," she said, "If only I knew what the hell etymology is."
Alex laughed, "It's the history of the word." Maureen blushed. "Listen, my dad's a Linguistics Professor at Columbia. He has huge etymology dictionaries. Maybe you could come over sometime and we could work on our projects together." Maureen smiled so wide her cheeks hurt and she was sure she could hear her heart beating in her ears.
"That would be awesome." They exchanged phone numbers and walked outside together.
"Where are you going next?" Alex asked Maureen under the shade of a huge oak tree in the courtyard.
"I have English," she said.
"Oh, well I'm going home."
"Oh."
"Well see you later, Maureen."
She made a mental note to go home and thank her parents.
**********
Elizabeth -
f. English
from Greek Elisabet, "God is my oath"
Richard -
m. English
derived from Germanic ric "power, rule" and hard "brave, hardy"
The year Elliot started working in Manhattan, Maureen begrudgingly agreed to walk with Dickie and Lizzie to their first day of school. Lizzie held her sister's hand, but Dickie straggled behind, chewing on his lower lip.
"Why can't daddy take us?" Lizzie asked, looking up to her big sister.
"Because of his new job," Maureen said, "He's going to be out in Manhattan."
"Why?" Lizzie asked. Maureen simplified it.
"So he can catch bad guys," she answered.
"Why?" Lizzie asked.
"Because."
"Why?"
"Stop it!" Lizzie started to laugh. Her strawberry-blonde hair was plaited so tightly it gave her face a stretched look. She wore "party shoes" with scuffed tips as she skipped along beside her sister. Dickie was still quiet. He looked too small for his new blue backpack. His hair was slicked over to one side and with the fuss his mother had gone to getting them ready that morning, he was just glad he didn't have to wear a tie.
Finally he spoke, "Maureen, is daddy a hero?" Maureen spotted a group of her friends walking across the street from the school and she flushed with embarrassment to be seen with her siblings. She dropped Lizzie's hand. Dickie tugged on the hem of her new sweater. "Is he?"
"Get lost, you guys," Maureen said, hustling the twins into the schoolyard. Dickie repeated his question once again, more urgently.
"Sure, Dickie, whatever." Then Maureen jogged out of the gate, waving to her friends, crunching through the fallen leaves.
**********
"Richard Stabler?" Miss Hanson, the young, blonde teacher peered over her class list at the little boy seated in the third row.
"Here," he said, raising his hand solemnly.
"Do you prefer to be called Richard? Rick? Dick?" A few of the older classmates snickered at the last suggestion. Dickie blushed, made a spontaneous decision, then lied.
"Richard," he said firmly, avoiding his sister's eyes. Miss Hanson nodded and marked something down on the class list. Dickie waited for it. She looked up at him again. Then she looked at Lizzie
"Are you two related?" she asked, pointing. Dickie rolled his eyes.
"We're twins," he said, mentally adding "stupid".
"Wow. Isn't that special? Splendid!" she exclaimed, then continued, "Amanda Thompson?"
"Here."
"Stephanie Williams?"
"Here." The voice was so pretentious sounding that Dickie turned to look at the speaker. Stephanie Williams was sitting beside his sister, wearing a blouse with a kilt and patent leather shoes. Her red hair was tied with a huge bow. Dickie disliked her immediately.
"John Zuckerman?"
"Here." Stephanie looked right at Dickie and he turned back to the front quickly.
After the roll call, Miss Hanson announced a welcome-back tea for parents interested in helping out with the class in the coming year.
"I want you to take these home to your parents," she announced. She handed out the fliers just before the bell rang for recess.
Out in the schoolyard, Dickie found Lizzie playing hopscotch with another girl he recognized with disgust as snobby Stephanie Williams.
"Lizzie?"
"What, Dickie? I'm busy," Lizzie said, stopping on the number 6, balancing precariously on one foot.
"Dickie?" Stephanie laughed at his name. He tried to ignore her.
"Do you think Dad will come to the parents' thing next week?"
Hop. Hop. Hop.
"Your turn, Stephanie," Lizzie said to the other girl, who tossed her stone and began the course. Lizzie stepped to the side with her brother. "Probably not," she told him, "he has his new job. He's really busy. Maybe mom can come."
Hop. Hop. Hop.
Stephanie finished her run and came towards the pair, a smug look on your face.
"Your dad chooses his job over you? He must not love you very much," she said with a smirk. Lizzie got very pale. Dickie stepped forward.
"What do you mean?" he challenged.
"I mean, any good parent would just take the day off. I know my dad would." Tears sprang up in Lizzie's eyes and she looked at her brother in desperation. Stephanie put her hands on her hips and waited for Dickie's response.
"You're so stupid! My dad's a hero," Dickie exclaimed with confidence, "My dad helps people and catches bad guys."
By the time Dickie and Lizzie entered school in grade 7, many things had changed.
"So what does your father do for a living?" asked the guidance counsellor during an introductory appointment. Dickie scowled.
"My dad's dead." It was a half-truth, and Lizzie didn't bother to correct him.
**********
Kathleen
Anglicized form of Caitlin
From Greek aikia "torture"
Kathleen had always thought of her entry into senior year of high school as being like a scene out of Grease. She and her friends had no Pink Ladies jackets, but when they walked through the double doors of the school in their new clothes, the confidence was there, along with the sense of finality. She imagined all the little grade tens looking up to her as someone to emulate, although maybe not as far as her skills in Math.
However, the romanticism of the moment was severely spoiled by the first bell summoning her to Chemistry.
She managed to get through the morning all right and found her friends sitting together in the cafeteria at lunch. Kathleen sat down with them and put a fork into the steaming plate of greyish gunk.
"What is this stuff?" she made a face.
"Who knows," her friend, Grace, replied.
The group was catching up on their summers and other general stuff when Grace brought up the party she was having that weekend.
"My parents are out of town and I have the whole house. Don is coming," she said. Don was Grace's college-aged boyfriend.
"I can't come," Kathleen said, disappointment clear, "we're going to my uncle's for dinner," she said with disgust. A funny look came over Grace's face. The rest of the group kept talking and eating, but Grace leaned over and looked her friend right in the eye.
"You're lucky, Kathleen," she said, "my uncle never even talks to us. He's estranged." Kathleen furrowed her brow.
"Why?" She sensed she had just got herself into a touchy subject, but Grace didn't seem very fazed.
"When my grandparents got divorced, my dad lived with my grandma and my uncle lived with my grandpa. They just never talked after that."
Kathleen confessed ignorance, "Is that common?"
"Oh sure," Grace assured, "it happens to most divorced families. Don hates his mother, for example."
"Oh."
For the rest of her classes, Kathleen stared at the wall, the floor, out the window, entertaining morbid thoughts about the possible breakdown of her own family. After all, sometimes it seemed inevitable, like the other night when she heard her mother pacing around upstairs as her father made a late-night call to Olivia from the kitchen about another disturbing case he didn't want to bring home, bring upstairs to his wife. Who would side with whom if it happened?
Obviously, Maureen would side with Dad. Maureen had been his first, his favourite, although she hadn't been planned. Kathleen had seen all the baby videos and it always looked like her father, with his take-charge attitude and deep sense of responsibility, had adapted to parenthood much better than her mother. Her parents never acknowledged that they'd conceived out of wedlock, but she'd done the math and she knew her older sister had, too. Maybe Maureen looked at the scene and saw her father sacrificing his freedom for his unborn child, owning up to his mistakes, realizing they weren't really mistakes after all. But it wasn't just that. There was something between Maureen and her dad that Kathleen couldn't quite put a finger on. They just clicked.
Dickie and Lizzie, on the other hand, were sticking close to their mother. How many birthdays had Dad missed while running around Manhattan, trying to save someone else's children? Kathleen knew that Dickie and Lizzie were their mother's children. They were indulged by her.
So far she had Maureen on her father's side and Dickie and Lizzie down on her mother's. So where did that leave her? In the middle, where she'd always been.
Kathleen went through phases. She loved both her parents at times, but she resented her father's cavalier attitude to discipline. He'd march in after a week's absence and express sudden concern over Kathleen's grades.
"How dare you?" she had shouted at him once in the kitchen, "You're never here and then you think you know what's best for me?" Her face was burning and she could see she'd stopped her dad right in his tracks. He could dish it out, but he sure couldn't take it, she thought.
"Kathleen," her mother admonished quietly from the kitchen counter. Kathleen just glared at her. Traitor. Take his side, why don't you.
"Maybe if you were ever here, you'd know that I'm trying to get help for my Math," she explained, nearly in tears, "I just need a break sometimes. Why can't you understand that?" She'd turned and pounded upstairs, slamming her door and flinging herself down on the bed, shaking with anger.
But she also resented her mother. Sometimes she thought that it had taken her mother two tries at loving her children before she got it right with her youngest. She felt guilty about having that thought since she knew it wasn't true. She had a hard time remembering the time Maureen used to talk about, the time before their dad had got his new job, the time when there wasn't enough money, so she didn't always see the necessity of his job. But she didn't want him on her back all the time, either. She was stuck in the middle, as always.
One one hand, Maureen had become the pillar of the family with her babysitting, cleaning, and cooking. On the other, Dickie and Lizzie had become the little angels. And somehow or other Kathleen had become the scapegoat. Who left this mess here? Must've been Kathleen. How come I didn't get this message? Kathleen took it. Kathleen always hogs the bathroom. Kathleen always stays out too late and talks on the phone too long. Kathleen, don't use that tone of voice. Kathleen this. Kathleen that.
**********
A week later, curled up in the big leather couch of the Wallers' den, Maureen researched her family tree. After painstakingly researching her siblings' given names, she put down the heavy book with a sigh. Adam looked up from his leather-bound volume.
"Bored?" he asked.
"Yeah." He grabbed her book and passed his to her.
"Here, you do my name and I'll do yours." He flipped through her book. "Stabler, Stabler, here we go." Adam raised the book, and recited the entry like a great orator:
"Stabler - stable, from Old French estable from Latin stabilis, 'firm, steadfast'. Literally, 'able to stand'."
Maureen raised her eyebrows.
"Well that's ironic."