Author: Maeve
E-mail address: docfraiser8@hotmail.com
Title: I Exist As I Am
Character: Toby
Category: mild angst
Pairing: Toby/Andi, Toby/CJ
Rating: G
Summary: Introspection, Toby Spoilers: Season 5
Author's Notes: (optional): A bit more of the Toby/Whitman group. For Angie and Kells.
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When he was young, very young, his dreams were hazed with Yiddish and the smell of warm bread. Now when he fingers the buttonholes of his coat he remembers the wrinkles of his mother's knuckles as she slid thread and needle through the holes in his corduroy coat. It was too warm for summer temple. He used to sweat out the Hebrew from his skin. And the smell of hot whiskey gives him the thick memories of his father, late at night with murmurs of bedtime tales.
At fifteen he realized that Murder Incorporated wasn't just a joke that the people at school threw around. And he knew that to be Jewish was to be harassed.
By eighteen he knew what his father was doing with the word Wesson, the dark glances, and the slick fabric of raincoats. He came to despise the yellow turn of fabric and now he wears brown and green. Blue because he can recall the pale blue of his mother's wool coat. The one they got in a second-hand shop in the Bronx.
His twenties radiated something that he couldn't quite remember. A haze of too much smoke and dizziness. There was an education in there somewhere and he could remember what he'd learned – but he couldn't recall the application of it until his thirties...
His thirties when he decided to marry the woman who'd swept (wiped) him across the floor.
He'd never known where his feet were when Andrea whispered in his ear.
By forty he knew he'd married the wrong woman.
His forties lingered of divorce and too many nights drunk on a lumpy couch. Too many lost elections. Too many failed campaigns. Too many too lates. He'd forgotten the words of the prayers his mother had whispered (chanted) in tragedy. He remembers that he called on his friends. But only the female ones that he can recall. He knows he called Andrea drunk once a week. And he knows that he called Claudia Jean sober at midnight every Friday.
But then that makes him think of sex and loss.
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
So in his fifties he started washing away the taste with his father's whiskey and the words he formed for a President. He gained and lost too many things (people) to count, and he remembers them each with a shot glass or a cigar. He lost his wife to his disposition. Lost Claudia Jean to a Ranger with a smile that was always too big.
But he won his first campaign.
And he gained a pair of twins.
And he wonders if they'll remember their father in whiskey and words.
He wonders if they'll remember him at all.
E-mail address: docfraiser8@hotmail.com
Title: I Exist As I Am
Character: Toby
Category: mild angst
Pairing: Toby/Andi, Toby/CJ
Rating: G
Summary: Introspection, Toby Spoilers: Season 5
Author's Notes: (optional): A bit more of the Toby/Whitman group. For Angie and Kells.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------
When he was young, very young, his dreams were hazed with Yiddish and the smell of warm bread. Now when he fingers the buttonholes of his coat he remembers the wrinkles of his mother's knuckles as she slid thread and needle through the holes in his corduroy coat. It was too warm for summer temple. He used to sweat out the Hebrew from his skin. And the smell of hot whiskey gives him the thick memories of his father, late at night with murmurs of bedtime tales.
At fifteen he realized that Murder Incorporated wasn't just a joke that the people at school threw around. And he knew that to be Jewish was to be harassed.
By eighteen he knew what his father was doing with the word Wesson, the dark glances, and the slick fabric of raincoats. He came to despise the yellow turn of fabric and now he wears brown and green. Blue because he can recall the pale blue of his mother's wool coat. The one they got in a second-hand shop in the Bronx.
His twenties radiated something that he couldn't quite remember. A haze of too much smoke and dizziness. There was an education in there somewhere and he could remember what he'd learned – but he couldn't recall the application of it until his thirties...
His thirties when he decided to marry the woman who'd swept (wiped) him across the floor.
He'd never known where his feet were when Andrea whispered in his ear.
By forty he knew he'd married the wrong woman.
His forties lingered of divorce and too many nights drunk on a lumpy couch. Too many lost elections. Too many failed campaigns. Too many too lates. He'd forgotten the words of the prayers his mother had whispered (chanted) in tragedy. He remembers that he called on his friends. But only the female ones that he can recall. He knows he called Andrea drunk once a week. And he knows that he called Claudia Jean sober at midnight every Friday.
But then that makes him think of sex and loss.
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
So in his fifties he started washing away the taste with his father's whiskey and the words he formed for a President. He gained and lost too many things (people) to count, and he remembers them each with a shot glass or a cigar. He lost his wife to his disposition. Lost Claudia Jean to a Ranger with a smile that was always too big.
But he won his first campaign.
And he gained a pair of twins.
And he wonders if they'll remember their father in whiskey and words.
He wonders if they'll remember him at all.