6: Irony

Andrew had to think quickly. Regardless of the fact that he was slow, at any moment, Berkowitz was going to open the door and pull him back inside. Andrew glanced frantically around the hallway. There was a staircase at either end. Berkowitz had been in the room above his own. That meant that he was on the third floor. If he took the stairs on the right, he had another floor and then the exit, wher eSarah Hawkins or any of the Inn's staff might be waiting to stop him. The spiraling stairs on the left went up to the fourth floor, where Jim Hawkins lived. It was most definitely a dead end.

Andrew began to panic; he could hear Berkowitz moving inside the room. Then, he heard snatches of a conversation held as people came up the stairs to his right. His head and heart pounded mercilessly, and he gasped for breath. Sweating, he knew he had no choice. The footsteps and the voices grew gradually louder. Andrew ran up the spiral staircase.

Andrew found himself in a sort of living room. Or at least, it was a living room on one side. On the other, there was a little breakfast nook and a counter, stove, oven, and icebox. The staircase rose up between these areas, and directly in front of Andrew was a hallway with several doors on either side. Andrew stood still. This was where the Hawkins family lived.

The table showed the remains of a small snack consisting of little cookies and purp juice; there were crumbs all around and a small spill on the tabletop. Beside the spill was a soaked rag, which seemed to be what was left of someone's feeble attempt to clean up. On the walls and among the little figurines on the shelves were framed pictures of a small family at play and at work. Andrew stepped closer to a shelf behind the head of the table.

It held three frames, with the one in the center as the largest. This center frame had a picture of Jim and Ravenna looking adoringly at each other on their wedding day. Andrew started. That had been the word. Adoringly. Indeed, there was no trace of fear or sadness in either face -- only the bliss famed to be part of marriage and union. Their heads were together, and their eyes locked in a gaze of utmost love and desire, their smiles of perfect knowing and perfect faith in each other....

The picture to the left showed baby Micha and little Andrew crawling towards the camera. Micha had her hand raised, and she'd been looking not at the camera, but at the person holding it. Little Andrew was grinning, showing his first teeth. They were beautiful children. It was one of those timeless, beautiful pictures cherished by anyone and everyone....

The last picture was of himself at seven, outside the Academy, playing with a red ball. He vaguely recalled that Jim had taken that picture, in which his eyes shone with an innocence Andrew couldn't seem to find anymore. In fact, in the glass of the frame, his dark eyes were reflected with tears steadily pouring from their corners. The childish longing to burrow away, into safety and comfort, welled up again in his chest.

Someone sniffed, and Andrew turned. Micha was sitting there in the middle of the living room, playing quietly with her toys, tears streaming down her face. They stared at each other for a long time, while her fingers fiddled with a toy ship. Then she pointed to the bandage on her left arm and said simply, "I got shot."

Andrew watched her intently. "I'm very sorry that happened," he said. The both of them seemed startled at the sincerity in his voice, but Andrew knew he shouldn't have been.

"Where are your parents?" Andrew asked at last. He moved toward Micha, as if drawn by the little form sitting barefoot on the rug. She sniffed and wiped her tears on her arm, keeping the toy ship in her tiny fingers.

"In their room, talking," she answered.

Andrew stared. In one of the rooms of the very floor he stood on, two people he'd searched for were together: the one he had just tried to kill, and the other he had longed to find alive. His knees buckled, and before he knew it, he was lying on the floor, sobbing silently. Why did he have to deal with all of this? What were the truths in his past, and what were the lies? For the third time that day, he questioned everything he'd come to believe.

Andrew felt a light touch on his arm, and he opened his eyes. Micha had crept closer, so she was sitting in the curve of his body. She gazed at him intently; seeing someone much older and much bigger cry the way she had just done was so strange... "Where does it hurt?" she asked.

Andrew smiled in spite of everything, but he didn't answer. It hurt everywhere. He didn't want to look the little girl in the eye. He felt as fragile as she looked. I grew up without a real daddy... I almost destroyed you and your family by trying to kill yours....

He wept. The very weight of what Andrew could have done began to pull him into despair, but Micha held firm. "Don't worry," she said. "You'll get better. I got shot, and I feel better already." After a pause, she added, "Well, maybe not really. But Mama says that everything gets better in time."

"Mama taught us a lot of things, didn't she?" Andrew whispered, so softly that Micha hadn't heard. He was only half-conscious.

"Just sleep," she said. "I'll stay here and watch you. I'll play quietly, so I don't wake you up."

Andrew closed his eyes. "Yeah," whispered a little voice. "Go to sleep. Mama's right. We'll get better..." If he hadn't been so feverish, confused, and tired, Andrew would have recognized the voice as his own, the way it sounded when he was seven years old....

=*=

Ravenna Calls Hawkins stepped out of the bedroom, wiping her eyes. She took a deep breath and said to herself, Stop crying, Raven. You should be thankful that no one was seriously hurt... Jim was in the bathroom, adjusting his bandages. Stubborn; the doctor in the clinic downstairs had told him not to move them. She shook her head and turned to go to the living room where she'd left Micha. The other twin was napping in his room -- Andrew had slept through it all.

At the thought of her sleaping son, Raven couldn't help but tremble. There was another sleeping Andrew downstairs -- the one her second son had been named for. She stopped and bit her lip, leaning for support against the wall. After all these years, he was back. Her image of him remained unshattered, but now there was a new one, of a young man she barely recognized. It was Andrew, but it wasn't Andrew.

Raven gasped. Micha was still there, but she now sat calmly in the crook formed by the young man's body on the floor. Shafts of light from the window fell on the two. The irony of the scene struck Raven. Her daughter was leaning against the young man -- only a boy, really -- who had nearly killed her.

Raven studied his face. Though Andrew was taller and leaner, his resemblance to Simon was uncanny. Are you indeed your father's son? she wondered. Part of her feared for Micha's life, and part of her ached to embrace the boy. My son is in there somewhere....

At that moment, Micha looked up, saw her, smiled calmly, and waved. At the same time, someone jerked at her skirt and asked, "Can I have a cookie?"

Raven picked him up and glanced at the untidy table. She sighed. "Andrew, darling, you just had a snack...."

Andrew yawned and rubbed his eyes. "But I want another one," he said sleepily. He blinked a few times and then noticed the sleeping form on the floor. "Andrew!" he exclaimed. Micha and Raven shushed him, but he wriggled out of his mother's arms. He scampered over and stooped, tilting his head to look into the bigger boy's face. Raven caught him when he lost his balance. If she hadn't been so afraid and worried, she would have thought the scene comical.

She held him in her lap as she now sat on the floor by Andrew's head. The little boy laughed and clapped his hands. "He stayed! My new friend stayed!" he said gleefully. He ignored his mother's attempts to quiet him and asked Micha, "Were you playing here while I sleeped?"

Micha shook her head. "He's just resting... Can I have another cookie, too?"

At that moment, Andrew began to stir....